


In any Universe

by rivers_bend



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Bondage, First Time, Implied Zayn Malik/Harry Styles, Joyful promiscuity, Kink Discovery, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Public Sex, implied Nick Grimshaw/OMC, implied harry styles/ofc, pain play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:18:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivers_bend/pseuds/rivers_bend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry Styles and Zayn Malik don’t make the cut the first time they audition for X-Factor, they decide to stay in London as motivation to try again the following year, and get jobs in a cafe across the street from BBC Broadcasting House. A cafe where Radio 1 DJ, Nick Grimshaw, finds himself one cold, dark evening in need of a coffee and a disarming smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In any Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleMousling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMousling/gifts).



> Set in an alternate timeline where things didn't happen quite the same as they did in ours. 
> 
> I do not know anyone whose names or public personas are used in this story, and neither believe nor mean to imply it ever happened.

Night comes early in February in London, so by the time Nick Grimshaw gets done with his meeting with the radio bosses at ten to six, it’s cold and long dark. They’d promised an hour meeting starting at four, so in addition to the nasty weather, he’s late home to meet his friend Collette, who’s down for the weekend, to let her into his flat before he’s got to be back at the old building for his show. To top it off, when they rang for a taxi for him in reception, they said it would be ten to fifteen minutes. If he’s going to be late anyway, he might as well bring her coffee. She’ll be a block of ice sitting on his doorstep if she didn’t find her way to the pub round the corner. He’s spied a nice cafe across the street. 

Glancing inside to make sure there’s no queue, he sees only a couple of girls in the window, still in their school uniforms, and a man with his laptop in the back. There’s no one waiting for drinks from the barista Nick can just about see behind the giant espresso machine on the counter. With a last look at his phone to make sure his cab isn’t imminent, Nick pushes through the door into the warm. 

There’s no bell or chime, so Nick gets to watch the kid behind the counter putting some shoulder into his rendition of the Pink track coming over the speakers. It’s quite a sight. The boy has way too much hair, bouncing curls over his ears and down his neck, covering what little profile Nick should be able to see from this angle of mostly behind. An apron hangs from narrow shoulders, loosely tied over even narrower hips, which aren’t flattered, but aren’t exactly disguised by the baggy chinos he’s got his company-brown polo tucked into. He reminds Nick of the boys who sweet talk their way past the bouncers at the clubs on Canal street. Nick misses those boys, with their soft northern vowels and easy smiles, though London’s not exactly short on twinks to keep Nick company.

He’d like to let the song play out, see if the kid has any more moves, but his taxi really should be here soon, and he’s coffees to get, so Nick leans an elbow on the counter, says, “Pink should definitely hire you as a backup dancer.” 

The boy gives a little shriek and spins toward the till where Nick is waiting, and never mind Nick’s seething envy at the lushness of his locks, the lad should have much, _much_ more hair. It should hide his face at all times. That is the most disarming smile Nick has ever seen in person, and Nick has partied with Scissor Sisters groupies in Hollywood, so he knows from pretty boys with disarming smiles. “Wow,” he says, hoping the lad will think he means the overreaction to Nick’s words, and not catch Nick’s overreaction to his face. 

“Sorry.” The boy, whose name badge says _Harry_ , flushes pink, and waves his hands around his face again. “I’m not supposed to sing, because I get distracted. And the manager thinks it’s offputting for the customers, but Zayn says they like it. The girls at least. And I think the muffins like it too. What pastry doesn’t like a bit of a serenade?” His face turns even pinker. His voice is much slower than Nick expected with the spinning and the handwaving. “Anyway. Hi. What can I get for you?” 

“Zayn?” Nick asks, because obviously that was the pertinent part of Harry’s little speech. Nick wonders if Zayn is his boyfriend, even though all he should be wondering is how fast Harry can make a cappuccino and an americano, no room for milk. 

“He’s my flatmate,” Harry says, like it’s not weird that Nick wanted to know. “This is his shift, really, lates, but he’s doing an art class Thursday evenings, so I’m covering for him until we get the schedule sorted. Life drawing. It’s one of those you have to have a portfolio to get into and all, not just the dosh.” 

He sounds like home and he looks like sin and Nick wants to pull up a stool and talk to him for the rest of the night. Collette’s surely found her way to the pub, and his producers don’t need to meet with him before the show; they come up with plans and then Nick just blathers on about whatever anyway. Waste of time. He should get to know Harry better. 

Of course, his phone disagrees. It whistles rudely to let him know he has a text—he’s got to stop leaving it where people can change his ringtones—and his cab’s out front. It would be weird not to order anything after all this, so he says, “How fast can you do me two Americanos?” Collette can put up with a simple drink today.

“Can do you a filter coffee before your cabbie even notices you’re not there,” Harry says, turning to the back counter. “Fresh, too. I just made it.”

“How’d you know there’s a cabbie waiting for me?” Nick says. 

Harry gives him another of those disarming smiles while he reaches for the coffee pot.. “I was just guessing, but it makes sense. Traffic’s shite this time of night, and BBC pays for cabs for their employees, so why would you drive if you don’t have to pay for a cab? Your producer’s always complaining that you rush in at the last minute, and there’s time for you to pop out for supper before you’re on air, so that text you got was the taxi company telling you your cab’s about to pull up.” Harry hands over Nick’s coffee and starts punching things into his till. “Two seventy,” he adds. 

That is quite some logic, though Nick can’t really fault it. “I’m suddenly feeling less creepy, and less impressive, for noticing that your name badge says _Harry_ ,” Nick says, pulling a fiver out of his wallet. 

The lad smiles as he takes it. “I am Harry,” he says. “And you’re Nick Grimshaw. I used to watch you on the telly, and I listen to you on the radio. When I’m not out. Or here. We have to listen to these special CDs when we’re here.” 

It’s not the first time Nick’s been recognized—though it’s not like he’s getting mobbed in the streets—but there’s something about the way Harry talks to him, more like Nick’s someone he knows through a friend than off the telly. Nick can’t tell if it’s disconcerting or reassuring. Either way, Collette really is going to kill him. “Nice to meet you, Harry,” Nick says hurriedly, waving off the money Harry’s trying to give back to him. “Keep the change.” 

The last thing Nick sees before heading back into the dark and cold is Harry’s pleased grin and the awkward wave he’s giving Nick around a fistful of coins. 

*

 

“I don’t need to go to a sex club to pull,” Nick says. It’s Saturday night, and he’d thought he and his friend Aimee, who’s visiting from New York, might go out to dinner. Maybe dancing. But she’s oddly—for someone who has already had more adventures than Nick could aspire to in fifty lifetimes—determined to experience everything London has to offer, and they did that last weekend. Maybe also the weekend before. Tonight, spring is in the air, and she thinks Nick should get his May Pole sucked in honor of the coming month. 

“I’m not saying you _need_ it. I’m just saying pulling at a sex club might be _fun_. You remember fun, right?” Aimee doesn’t even deign to look at him, far too busy unwinding a platinum curl from around a pink sponge roller. He does remember fun. He had some last night at G-A-Y, and the night before, when they did karaoke and he got a perfectly lovely blowjob in the toilets from the boy collecting glasses. 

“You could just say _you’d_ like to pull at a sex club and I’d be happy to go with you.” He has no problem with the concept of a sex club, so long as no one mistakes him for the volunteer who’s supposed to bottom in a fisting demonstration this time—that had been awkward—it’s just the way Aimee had made it sound like this was all because she pitied him and the fact he hasn’t had a boy in his bed since before Christmas. 

“Fine, Nicholas, I would like to flog a pretty boy and then let him eat my twat in front of a room full of strangers, and I think you should come. Happy now?” 

“Ugh,” Nick says, because it’s expected of him. It would not be the first time he’s seen someone eating Aimee out, but he’s not sure she knows he was awake that time in Ibiza. It would be a first with the flogging though. He didn’t know she was into that. 

“The Castle’s a mixed club,” she says. “There’ll be plenty of boys who’ll want to eat you out, too.”

“Let me do my hair, then,” Nick says. She’ll be ages in front of the mirror if he lets her. 

 

The club is indeed mixed. Sloaney tourists slumming with their boyfriends, trying to avoid rubbing shoulders with leather daddies straight from central casting; scene dykes ignoring the men eyeing them up in their bras and rubber shorts; boys in collars and thongs; dommes in heels and corsets; a whole group of girls in halos and angel wings—hen night or hippies, Nick reckons—and a decent smattering of people like him, in jeans and a leather Chelsea boot. It’s hard to go wrong with a good Chelsea boot in a place that might have a dress code. 

“Have fun,” Aimee says before they’re hardly through the door, kissing the air next to his cheek—one of those rare occasions where she obviously agrees with him that a big red lip print isn’t the look he’s going for. 

“You too,” he tells her, but she’s already gone toward a pretty, dark-haired boy standing demurely against the far wall. Nick figures he might as well have a look around.

According to the signage by the door, the club is on three levels: alcohol-free bar and public fondling area on the ground floor where they came in, private rooms upstairs, and dungeon in the basement. Nick decides discretion is the better part of friendship and leaves Aimee to her public fondling. He personally hasn’t done much more than a bit of slap and tickle, maybe the occasional recreational use of a necktie, but Nick likes a man who’s a bit of a voyeur, and the dungeon seems like a pretty good place to find one. 

Just at the bottom of the stairs there are two women playing with rope and pulleys, looking more like they’re practicing for some kind of rock climbing competition than having sex. But they seem to be having fun, so, more power to them. It’s not something he’s keen to watch though, and none of the people who are interested are his type, so he heads farther into the dungeons. Around the corner there’s a collection of heavy furniture props, crosses and such, some with people strapped to them, some empty. What really catches Nick’s eye though, is the man leaning against the wall between a padded sawhorse and a set of stocks. Or rather, what catches Nick’s eye is the lad on his knees between the man’s obscenely expensive-looking cowboy boots. There’s something familiar about him, but Nick can’t place him.  
   
He’s in ill-fitting, faded blue jeans, low enough on his hips that Nick’s got a good view of how he’s not wearing anything underneath, and a baggy white tee rucked up in the back by the way his arms are bound behind him—forearms lashed together with fingers cupping the opposite elbow. His hair would be falling over his collar if it weren’t held in two tight fistfuls by the man against the wall, who seems, for reasons Nick’s unclear on, intent on hampering the boy’s efforts to get into the man’s jeans with nothing but his mouth. Though, on reflection, he does struggle prettily.  
   
Nick looks around and sees enough other people lurking unobtrusively in the shadows watching the goings-on at various stations that he figures it’s not too rude to stay where he is. And it looks like the show’s about to get better; the boy has the top buttons of the man’s flies open and is nuzzling his way inside now.  
   
That’s when Nick realises who the boy is. Something about the way his shoulders move, or maybe the way his hair curls over his temple as he turns his head, Nick can practically hear Pink exhorting him to raise his glass. It’s the lad from the coffee shop. H... H... It wasn’t Henry—Nick would remember that—Harry. That’s it.  
   
Harry of the slow speech and alarmingly sweet smile, who Nick’d idly hoped was into dick, even though he’d looked far too young for Nick to be thinking about seriously. Looks like he’s into dick. And he must be at least eighteen if he’s here. Nick should stop watching now he realises he knows him, but his feet apparently disagree, because they stay rooted to the spot as Harry noses the man’s nuts out of the V of his jeans and licks up the length of his cock. Nick swears he can feel it in his own, but he doesn’t have to look around to know that groping yourself is a step too far, so he keeps his hands at his sides. The show Harry’s putting on with the other man’s cock doesn’t make it easy. 

By the time the guy across the way has given up letting Harry actively suck him and is just dragging him in by his hair, using his mouth, Nick’s got his back to the wall, unconsciously nearly mimicking Harry’s pose, his hands behind his back pinned by the weight of his hips in an effort to keep himself from humping his palm the way the man is fucking Harry’s face. Fortunately for Nick’s self control, it doesn’t last long after that. After a particularly drawn-out moment of tugging Harry’s nose right up to his belly, the man pushes him off and jerks himself roughly onto Harry’s neck and chest. 

Nick wants to see what will happen next—will Harry be allowed to come? Will the man untie him? Get him off himself or make Harry do it? Leave him hard and send him on his way?—but more than that, he wants Harry to not know Nick was watching him. The kid thinks he’s having anonymous sex; it seems rude to disabuse him. So, with a great deal of difficulty, Nick peels himself off the wall as the man leans down to help Harry stand, and he turns and heads back toward the stairs. 

Before he can even start to look for Aimee, he’s waylaid by a very pretty boy with the floppy blond hair and tanned features of a California surfer, but the waif-like limbs and hips of a runway model. He doesn’t even tell Nick his name before he’s offering to take him upstairs and take care of the _situation_ in Nick’s pants. When Nick asks what he has in mind, the lad answers, “Anything you fancy,” and Nick’s hardly going to say no to that. 

 

Aimee finds him at the bar forty minutes, some very nice snogging, and a slick and practiced blowjob later, nursing something that’s supposed to taste like a mojito—it doesn’t—and trying to look like he’s not even a little bit keeping an eye out for a young barista whose easy smile is only the first on a list of stellar mouth-oriented qualities. 

“Oh god,” Aimee says. “Please tell me you’ve pulled already. I had to give a boy a fake number and he’s going to start wondering why I haven’t got my phone out soon.” 

Nick looks in the direction Aimee’s chin is pointing, and sees the dark-haired lad she’d gone off with leaning on a pillar, busily typing into a phone, a sappy smile on his face. Aimee can definitely have that effect on people. Not up for teasing her, he asks, “We calling it a night?” even as he’s standing, shoving his drink away and patting his pockets— _wallet, phone, keys_ —happy for an excuse to leave. Wouldn’t matter if he saw Harry unbound, on his feet, and with his mouth empty of another man’s dick, it would still be awkward. Nick doesn’t need awkward. 

“Only if you’ve pulled,” Aimee says, confirming Nick’s original suspicion that this had been about him the whole time. 

As though the gods are shining upon him, his surfer model catches his eye from across the room just then, giving him a cheeky smile and a little wave, and Nick has the perfect opportunity to say, “Had him, actually,” as he gives the lad a finger wiggle back. With the proof right there, Aimee believes him. 

“Oooh,” she coos. “Nice. Him I’d give my real number.” 

Nick laughs at her as they push their way toward the exit. “I’ll believe it when I see it, Phillips.” 

*

 

In the week before Aimee has to go back to New York, they go out almost every night after Nick’s show, sometimes not getting home until after lunch the next day. Aimee’s making contacts left, right, and center, but Nick’s mostly drinking, dancing, and gossiping. He’s starting to wonder if his liver is going to abandon him altogether and if he’s going to ever again get a night’s sleep. 

Plus side, though he’s papped outside a chippie at three in the morning with a silver-foil crown on his head and Kelly Osbourne hanging off his neck, and his producer makes fifty copies of the picture and Heat Magazine’s accompanying snarky headline and hangs them about the studio, Nick manages to keep it together at work and doesn’t lose his job. 

He brags about this to Aimee when he’s dragging himself out of bed at six PM on four hours sleep her last day there, but she just mumbles, “You’re a trouper, Nick Grimshaw,” and rolls over so her back’s to him. She gets to stay under the covers, and he wants to smother her with a pillow. But he’s a professional, and she’s leaving in less than eighteen hours, and won’t be back for at least three months. 

There’s a moment while he’s helping Aimee with her bags at the curb at the airport, he worries he’s going to have to take it all back, when he gets a call from Broadcasting House. But it’s just HR ringing to remind him that it’s the last day to sign the annual health and safety forms. Looks like he’s heading over there on his way home from the airport, but at least Aimee won’t have to put off her flight to help him find another job.

“Back soon, love,” Aimee reminds him as she kisses him goodbye. “Don’t have too much fun without me.” 

“I’ll do nothing but pine,” Nick promises, piling the last of her bags onto the trolley. 

 

Traffic back into London is light, and it’s still early by the time Nick’s got the papers signed and is venturing out into the spring sunshine. The very bright sunshine, glinting off the windows across the street. The coffee shop windows. Maybe he needs a coffee.

He’s not expecting Harry to be there, but a bit of croissant would be nice, maybe an espresso, see if it’s as good as the filter coffee was. Bound to be better than the dross in the BBC canteen. This time the place is crowded, with most of the tables occupied, and half a dozen or so people waiting for their drinks. The bloke ordering is as wide as two average people, and Nick can’t see past him to the till. Given the strength of the surge of frustration he feels, even Nick has to admit maybe he is more about wanting to see if it’s Harry waiting on customers than the need for a pastry. 

When the man moves on, though, it’s definitely not Harry at the till. The lad looks like Bambie crossed with a silent film star, his black hair cut close back and sides but flopping over his forehead, in danger of tangling with his obscenely long lashes. Nick’s tempted to pull out his phone and check there’s not a modeling agency in the neighbourhood or something. Two blokes this pretty in one cafe seems unlikely if not. 

“C’n I help you, mate? You’re holding up the queue,” the lad says, and Nick realises that he’s finished waiting on the girl in front of him in the time Nick was staring. His accent pegs him as a northern boy as well, Bradford and Leeds way if Nick had to guess. He’s not wearing a name badge on his apron. 

“Hiya Nick,” comes a voice from behind the espresso machine before Nick can answer. Harry’s face pops over the top, flushed and sweaty, and Nick is not having unpure thoughts at _all_. He’s not. Harry has been making coffees, steaming milk, doing work things at his place of work. Not sucking cock in a club. Nick can feel the blush starting in his chest, and resists the urge to cover his face with his hands. This was a terrible idea.

Harry and the lad at the till exchange glances. “Nick?” Harry repeats. 

“Hi, Harry,” Nick says, and Harry flashes him a smile before setting himself in motion again, doing whatever it is one does that makes banging and thumping and squirting noises in a cafe. 

“Still holding up the queue,” the man behind Nick points out. Quite rudely if you ask Nick. 

“Double espresso and a pain au chocolate,” Nick says. He deserves a bit of chocolate for having to see Harry like that. 

“Eat in or take away?” Harry’s coworker asks. 

_Take away_ , Nick thinks. He should definitely take— “Eat in,” his traitor mouth says. 

As the lad takes his money, Nick notices paint round the edges of his cuticles and a smudge of more, or maybe charcoal, on his wrist. Northern, artist—likely he’s Harry’s flatmate. What had Harry called him? Something short. One syllable, familiar— Zane, like Zane Lowe. “Thanks,” Nick says and stuffs a fiver in the tip jar. Zane notices and flicks a glance in Harry’s direction that makes Nick suspect he was caught blushing.

While Harry’s bustling about getting the drinks for the people still waiting, Nick can’t really see him, but the flash of pink cheek or bouncing curl keeps him from taking out his phone or people-watching the the way the other waiting customers are doing. When it’s Nick’s turn to get his order, Harry winks at him, says, “Lunch rush is nearly over; if you don’t have anywhere to be, I’ve got a break coming up.” 

“Yeah,” Nick says. “Okay.” Like the last time he saw him, Harry didn’t have a dick in his mouth and his hands tied behind his back. Like that won’t make talking to him incredibly awkward.

 

It turns out, though, that doesn’t actually matter as much as he thought. Nick finds a place large enough to set his cup at the little counter against the wall, and by the time he’s done with his pastry and his coffee’s cool enough to drink, half the place has cleared and he can steal the table in the corner where the man was sat with his laptop last time. He’s just in time for Harry to come to join him, sans the apron he was wearing earlier, and holding a drink of his own—some kind of herbal tea from the smell. 

“It’s great to see you,” Harry says, and his smile’s so genuine that Nick just feels pleased to have it trained on him—wants to see more of it. 

“Is it?” It comes out about as far from cool and aloof as Nick’s heard in ages, but that’s okay, because Harry’s still smiling. 

“Zayn was starting to think I’d made you up. Well, not like you don’t exist. Of course you exist, you’ve been on telly and all sorts, but like you’d never come in here. Making up that I’d met you.” Harry looks Zayn’s way and gives him an even more blinding grin than the one he’s giving Nick. “But you’re real, and you even remember me.” 

“And that’s Zayn?” Nick asks. “The famous art student-slash-flatmate?” 

“Yep,” Harry agrees. “He listens to Radio One too. His fave is Sara Cox, then Zane Lowe, because of the name, I reckon, except it’s spelled different—my Zayn has a Y-N. But he likes you, too. Reckons you might even be third. Are you waiting for a taxi again?” 

Harry’s conversational style could give a man whiplash, except he talks so slowly the topics seem to blend into each other rather than bounce around. Nick’s not sure how he does it. “No,” he says. “Drove this time. I was coming from the airport.” 

“Oh, you mentioned the other night you’d an American friend staying. Did they go home, then?” 

“She did,” Nick says. “For a bit, anyway. Aimee, her name is. The French spelling.” Why did he say that? There is no reason Harry needs to know that. But there’s no reason Nick needs to know how Harry’s flatmate’s name is spelled, either—is Nick picking up Harry’s speech patterns? 

“There’s no interesting ways to spell Harry,” Harry says. “You could spell yours with a Q. Very showbiz, that. But, maybe a bit, I don’t know, more like short for Nicole.” Harry eyes Nick contemplatively while he takes a sip of his drink. “Besides, you’ve got Grimmy, which is good. Nice. That’s what I said to Zayn when you first came in. ‘Grimmy came in the caff today,’ I said, and he said it was odd me calling you that since I don’t know you, but you don’t mind, do you? I think that’s why I like it. It’s more friendly.”

“Grimmy’s fine,” Nick says. “Or Grimmers, Grimshaw, Nick, whatever. Just not Nicky. I hate Nicky.” That last he says a little more passionately than he means to. He’s usually careful not to give people such ready access to his buttons. Not that Harry seems like he’d take advantage. 

“Sounds like something arseholes at school might call you,” Harry says. 

He’s not wrong. Nick doesn’t want to dwell on it. 

He remembers that last time he was here, Harry said he was working Zayn’s shift. “So is this your usual hours?” he asks. Not that he’s over here all that often daytimes, but he won’t be on late nights forever with any luck, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to know when there might be a chance of Harry serving him coffee. Besides, he’d like to change the subject. 

“Seven to half three,” Harry says. “Zayn does one to half eight. He likes sleep too much to do earlies every day.” 

“I feel like I know more about Zayn than I do you,” Nick says, remembering halfway through the sentence that he knows what Harry looks like on his knees, knows he likes, at least sometimes, to have his hands tied, knows he can open a button fly with his teeth and doesn’t have much of a gag reflex. All he really knows about Zayn is that he’s an artist who likes to sleep. Years of presenting keep Nick from fumbling his words, but he does curse his decision to get espresso, because the cup is not nearly large enough to hide his face behind. 

“Hazza,” Zayn calls, and Nick and Harry look up to see a queue forming at the till. 

“Break’s over,” Harry says, and takes one last gulp of his drink. “But we could, another time, if you maybe want my number? Learn more about me, if you fancy.” 

There is probably a good reason Nick should not be exchanging phone numbers with hot baristas who frequent Soho sex clubs, but like his brain doesn’t have any say, his hand gives over his phone without any hesitation, and he watches as Harry puts his number in it. 

“Can I send myself a text?” Harry asks. Nick nods as Zayn calls for Harry again. “You do it,” Harry says, shoving Nick’s phone into Nick’s hand as he heads back behind the counter. “Please?” he adds, twisting round to catch Nick’s eye, nearly knocking over a display of crisps and biscuits in the process. Somehow, he and the rack stay upright, and he makes it back to his post without anything breaking. Nick types _nice save_ into his phone and sends it to his newest contact: Harry :) Styles.

*

 

Several hours later, Nick’s just done his third link and hit play on one of his old faves that his producer, Becky, hates, when his phone buzzes with a message.   _Is it weird to text you when you’re at work? I liked your story about the dog ._  It’s Harry. 

Technically, Nick isn’t supposed to have his phone on in the studio, but Becky’s not going to do anything, so he sends back, _no, it’s fine. how did the rest of your shift go?_ Or at least he tries to. When he looks though, what he actually sent was _noi      b_. “Um,” he says and Becky raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “My phone’s gone mental.” 

“Did you drop it?” 

“No.” He didn’t. He’s pretty sure. But it was in his pocket when the dog was scrabbling dangerously close to his junk today. Maybe one of those giant paws got to it. “No,” he repeats, poking experimentally at the buttons. He sends Harry a message that says _i   pb_ even though that’s not at all what he typed and he definitely didn’t hit the send button. 

“Back in ten,” Becky says, and Nick drops his phone on the desk and adjusts his mic, fits his fingers to the faders. 

“That was _Riverside_ , by Sidney Sampson. Definitely one to get your blood pumping.  I’m still liking that one, Becky says no way. Give us a text on eight-double-one-double-nine and let us know what you think.” His own phone buzzes just then, loud against the hard surface, and he hopes that if it was audible on air people will think it’s a sound effect. Becky clearly hopes so too if the way she’s glaring and pointing in the direction of his screen reader is any indication. “Aiden from Basingstoke says ‘Never play that again please.’ He’s had enough I’m guessing.” Nick risks a quick glance at his phone. It’s a message from Harry. It just says _um_. 

“Sequel to the dog story,” Nick continues. He’s not going to risk trying to message Harry again with his phone doing crazy things, but he’d like Harry to know why Nick’s texting like he’s gone round the bend. “Should have been protecting my phone while I was protecting my manhood. It’s gone a bit mental.” Becky raises both hands in exasperation and gives him a scarily pointed look. “Not that I’d know that, because I’m on air and definitely not doing anything with my phone. And here’s an old favourite from Goldfrapp. Though my friend will be angry I played this—assuming she’s listening—she’s only just got over the fact she can’t find those silver boots from the video anywhere.” Nick sets _Oh la la_ playing and turns it down to background hum in the studio. It’s both an oldie and a goodie, but this one he’s not sure he’s over hearing it played _everywhere_. 

“What’s with the phone, Grimshaw,” Becky admonishes. 

“Sorry.” Nick is looking at it again which probably takes some of the weight from his apology. But Harry’s sent another message. _Meet you after work?_ it says. _There’s a pub round the corner from me that’s open til 1 on weekdays_. Nick tries to imagine himself the year he got to London, maybe running into Sara Cox in a cafe and just getting her phone number and asking her out for drinks. He can’t do it. Not that he’s Sara Cox levels or anything, but still. Harry’s incredibly cheeky, in the most endearing way possible. 

Flicking a glance at the board to make sure he did indeed queue up Example after Goldfrapp and he’s not risking dead air, Nick tries to compose a reply. He’s absolutely fucking knackered after a month with the Aimee Phillips party, but Nick’s not sure how long Harry’s cheek would last in the face of defeat, and he actually bloody likes the lad, and one drink never hurt anyone. Not that he’d know from personal experience, because Nick’s never left after one drink in his life, but he’s heard this is true, and there’s a first time for everything. 

_Okay,_ he types, but his screen says _aaaaaaa aab_. When he tries to delete that, it sends instead. Of course. 

_HAHAHA_ comes back, followed by, _if yes, say you’re gagging for a coffee in the next link and meet me at the Cock and Horn off Oxford St. If you can’t, say something about needing to get an early start in the morning._

“What are you giggling about,” Becky says. 

“Nothing,” Nick says and laughs harder. If he’d not been there before, Nick is certain he’d never be able to meet up with Harry in a place called Cock and Horn, which sounds more like a gay sex club than the actual club where he’d seen Harry last week, but he has, though not in years, and the place is dirty and dull, and filled mostly with tired shoppers who’ve somehow managed to walk past the swankier pubs, or locals who can’t be arsed dealing with tourists. 

In his next link, Nick tells Becky he’s gagging for a coffee and she should see if there’s any left in the pot, and immediately gets a text from Harry that just says, _Yay!_

The rest of the show crawls by. 

 

The Cock and Horn is just as dingy as Nick remembers, but loads more crowded. Though to be fair, he’s mostly only been here on like a Tuesday afternoon. One circuit of the room doesn’t net him any pretty baristas, but just as he passes the door for a second time round, Harry materializes from behind a man in a shockingly ugly tweed coat and a terrible toupee. “You came,” Harry says, starting to move in for a hug before stopping at the last moment and shaking Nick’s hand awkwardly instead. 

Nick doesn’t do awkward, and says with a smile, “So I did. What are you drinking?” 

“Coke?” Harry shrugs. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.” 

“Trouble?” How would— “You aren’t on about the coke you put up your nose, are you?” 

“Nah,” Harry says, edging closer and frowning like that never even occurred to him. “Just I haven’t got a fake on me, and Zayn’s mate got asked for ID in here last week.” 

It’s Nick’s turn to frown. He’s _sure_ that was Harry in the club. And even he and Aimee had had to show ID at the door. “How old are you?” Nick asks. 

“Let’s get drinks. They’ve a patio out back. No heaters, like, but we’ve got our coats.” Looking carefully, Nick can see a slight waver at the edge of that cocky smile Harry’s so good at, but it still gets to him. Not that he’s willing to give in with no fight at all.

“Drinks,” he agrees. “But then no more dodgy-dodgy the questions.” 

With a look of relief, Harry lifts one shoulder in acquiescence, waver mostly gone. “Sure,” he says. 

Nick gets a pint for himself and a coke for Harry, though he’s not that worried about getting in trouble. Coppers have better things to do than poke around the chilly beer gardens of tatty old pubs. “I’m seventeen,” Harry says without prompting once they’ve sat on two rickety wooden stools near a rusty iron table. 

“Seventeen.” Better than sixteen. But still. What’s this kid doing in London? “Please tell me you’ve not run away from home. No father going to come down give me a Chelsea Smile for corrupting his son?”

“Pfft.” Harry’s face seems torn between thinking Nick’s funny and wondering if he’s actually joking at all. “Mum knows where I am. She wanted me to come home when I didn’t make it, but she knows I’m better down here for trying again. If I go back, I’ll be stuck.” Shaking his head a bit, Harry takes a sip of his drink. “Chelsea Smile. I don’t think people do them anymore. Think it’s just like, in movies and stories your dad tells you.” 

Since Nick’s no proof Harry’s not right, he can’t really argue that point. But beyond that, he’s no idea what Harry’s going on about. “Tried what? Stuck where?” 

“X-Factor,” Harry says, like he thought Nick already knew. “I guess— You can only see me for a few seconds in the background of crowd footage at bootcamp. I forget. Me and Zayn’ve watched it so many times it seems like we were actually on for a minute. Didn’t make it though. Neither of us.” 

Suddenly, Harry’s eagerness to get Nick to notice him makes a lot more sense. Not that a late-night Radio One DJ could actually do anything for a potential X-Factor contestant, but a seventeen-year-old kid wouldn’t necessarily know that. “Oh,” Nick says, more surprised by how disappointed he is than by the fact that Harry’s after more than his company. He should have listened to his instincts and gone home and gone to sleep. 

“Are you tired?” Harry asks. “You sound tired. I’m sorry. I should have waited to ask you out, probably. Your friend only went home today.” 

Nick hadn’t meant to leak anything into his tone, but if he did, it’s kind of Harry to give him an excuse. And odd, if he’s after Nick for a leg up. But Nick will take it. “Knackered,” he agrees. He needs sleep a lot more than he needs whatever this is Harry thinks he’s doing with a not-very-influential radio host who’s regrettably much closer to thirty than twenty. To top it off, the pint isn’t even very good. Tastes like they need to flush the pipes. 

Picking at the corner of his beer mat, not looking at Nick’s face for the first time since they sat down, Harry says, “Zayn said I’d probably fuck this up.” Pick, pick, then a strip comes off, one edge right to the other. “But I had to try. I’ve been— you, like, _years_ , you know? And there you were, even better than, and nice, so. But you know.” He looks at Nick, eyes darting over his face like there might be answers there. There are definitely no answers. Nick’s completely lost. 

“I know?” he finally asks when the conversation has lagged long enough it seems impossible Harry means to go on. 

“Your phone’s broken, so I couldn’t just text you. I made it weird.” 

There is, frankly, nothing not weird about any of this, from the whole sex club thing, to Harry’s age, to Nick’s keyboard problems with his phone. “It might just be weird anyway,” Nick says. 

“I leap before I look.” It sounds like something Harry’s heard so often he accepts the truth of it without it even meaning anything anymore. Nick has no idea what to make of him. The one thing he can say: Harry is definitely not boring. Nick watches him peel another piece off his beer mat and wonders if it might be possible that he’s not just here tonight to see what Nick can do for his musical career. 

“Tell you what,” Nick says, resisting the urge to lay his hand over Harry’s restless ones. “I’m going tomorrow to get my phone sorted. You can text me, and we’ll pretend the weird didn’t happen. How about that?” 

It’s like the bloody sun coming out after a month of winter, Harry’s smile. Nick has to wonder what this boy’s mother was thinking letting him loose in a city like London with just an art student to look after him. Though, given the evidence he’s just had of her son’s persuasiveness, she might not have had a choice. Nick’s own mother is largely immune to his considerable charms, but he’s the youngest of three. Harry might be the oldest, or an only child. His poor mum mightn’t have had any practice before he came along. 

“I’d like that,” Harry says. “We can start over.” 

*

 

Thanks to his phone insurance, the Orange shop—after testing his for water damage and finding none—gives Nick a new phone. They import his data, have him sign a few forms, and he’s on his way before lunch time. Now that he can, he texts his mate Pixie to meet him at the pub near his flat, where they both talk about ordering the spinach salad special, but Nick somehow ends up with a steak-and-Guinness pie. 

He’s trying to convince Pix that the pub is not the place to let Busta up on the table, when his phone emits the default Blackberry text alert at ear-splitting volume. 

“Bloody hell, Grimshaw, what the fuck is that?” Pixie demands as she ignores her dog scarfing dried cranberries off her plate. 

“New phone,” Nick says. “Haven’t had a chance to play with the alerts yet.” 

“Who is it? Is it Henry? David says he’s back in town this week. Tell them to join us if they have time.” 

It’s not Henry. Or David. Or any of Pixie and Nick’s other mutual friends. The message is from Harry :) Styles, and says, _How do you make an apple puff?_

An apple puff? “Just someone from work,” Nick tells Pixie, and oh god, why is he lying? He’s a terrible liar. But it has the intended effect—Pixie goes back to her salad, leaving Nick to answer. 

_I think you might have me confused with Mary Berry,_ he replies. 

_I’d never,_ Harry sends back. _She has much nicer blouses for a start._ Then, after a second, _You chase it round the garden._

Nick guffaws. He can’t help it. Now Harry says the punch line, Nick remembers the joke from his older brother Andy’s _Ha Ha Bonk Book_ when he was little. Harry’s sending him terrible and ancient jokes meant for six year olds. 

“Not someone from work,” Pixie says, snatching the phone out of Nick’s hand while he’s vulnerable, trying to recover from laughing so hard. “Who’s Harry Styles and why does he have a smiley in his name?”

“He’s a boy,” Nick says.

“Oooh!”

“Not that kind of boy.” They’re making this not weird. Or at least, they’re making it Ha Ha Bonk Book weird, not bonking in a sex club weird. Nick can totally do the not-that-kind-of-boy boy thing with Harry. “He works in a cafe near the new building and we got talking. He’s funny.”

Pixie scrolls through their text exchange and raises her painfully sculpted eyebrows at him before pushing his phone back across the table. “I assume he’s funnier in person?” 

“You have to admit, Mary Berry does make some excellent fashion choices for a woman in her seventies.”

“She looks like when your nan is going down to muck out the horses. Is he straight or something? Why not that kind of boy?”

“Your dog is eating my pie,” Nick points out. Sadly, it’s true. The pie was lovely, and all that’s left is a few slobbered on bits of pastry. But Pixie forgets about Harry in her efforts to apologise, for long enough that Nick can text a :D and a :P back to him, so it’s worth the sacrifice of the rest of his lunch. As her twentieth birthday approaches, Pixie’s becoming obsessed with people’s ages, and he doesn’t feel like explaining how his new friend is only seventeen. 

In the next several weeks, Harry sends Nick a multitude of terrible jokes and some wry observations about human nature, generally filtered through experiences with customers, and Nick replies, sometimes asks his opinion about songs he’s playing on his show, or chats with him about what’s in the gossip rags hanging round the studio. Neither of them suggest meeting up, and Nick doesn’t go by the cafe, even the day he’s at the office when Harry should be working. It seems the easiest way to keep things from being weird. BBMing works for them; it makes Nick happy when he sees Harry’s name on his phone, and he goes days at a time without thinking about Harry on his knees with his hands behind his back, or the way his dimples flash when he laughs. Then, the first Friday in June, Harry sends Nick a picture of an open cash drawer stuffed with notes and says, _what are you doing tomorrow? wanna go shopping?_

Nick shouldn’t feel a thrill at the thought of shopping with a drawer full of stolen money, but it makes him smile. _I’m a national broadcasting treasure,_ he replies. _I can’t be getting caught up in your embezzlement schemes_. 

_Who told you you’re a treasure? I heard you’re dissing UK music in favour of US synth pop._

Nick should not have spilled that drink on the twat from The Metro at the Brits afterparty last year. At the very least he shouldn’t have told him it improved his suit. They’ve been printing shite about Nick every few issues ever since. 

_TREASURE_ , Nick repeats. _What we shopping for?_

_Jeans. And stuff. Topman Oxford St 10:00?_

_11:00,_ Nick counters. He has a policy against being out of bed before half nine on a Saturday. 

_11\. Gotta get back to work. Have a good night. xx_

It’s not the first time Harry’s signed off with kisses, but it is the first time he’s signed off with kisses when Nick’s going to see him the following day. Not that Nick’s reading anything into that. 

*

 

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Nick’s digging through too many receipts and business cards, trying to find something smaller than a twenty to give the cabbie, when his phone, which is shoved into the back pocket of his shorts, buzzes against his arse. It doesn’t stop, which means it’s a phone call, and Nick ends up fumbling for it while trying to give the driver the tenner he finally found folded in thirds and shoved in the corner of his wallet. 

“Are you almost here?” Harry whispers when Nick picks up. “I need someone to tell me if these are too tight, but if you’re going to be a bit I’ll try something else on while I’m waiting.” 

The not insignificant part of Nick that has self-preservation instincts tells him to run after the taxi, climb back inside, and return home immediately. Or ring his friend Gellz and meet her at the nearest pub for a large drink. But Nick’s mouth says, “I’m just outside. If _what’s_ too tight?” 

“These jeans,” Harry says, still whispering. “Hurry.”

Nick hurries. 

A warm Saturday in late May is not the easiest time to fight your way to the back of Topman, and Nick’s trying to map a route around a pack of lads with EFL rucksacks over their shoulders when his phone chirps in his hand. _Need a black t size s. 3rd cubicle from far end._ “Do I look like a personal shopper?” Nick mutters under his breath as he detours to the display of t-shirts on the right-hand wall. He wonders if getting half naked in front of Nick is part of Harry’s plan to keep things not weird. 

Size small black t-shirt in hand, Nick says, “My friend wants this,” to the girl policing the changing rooms, then calls out, “Harry?” so she doesn’t think he’s going creeping around for randoms. 

“Nick!” a voice says, all echoey, before Harry’s head pops out the cracked door of the third cubicle from the end just as he’d said. “Come see.” A slim arm, much less pale then the last time Nick had seen it, shoots out too, grabby fingers flexing. Nick brandishes the shirt as he walks towards the enticing tableau of curls and dimples and sunkissed skin. 

When he gets to the door, Nick expects Harry to take the shirt from him and come out wearing it and the jeans he needs a second opinion on, but instead he gets tugged by the wrist into the cubicle. Not that Nick could even begin to count the number of people of all genders and sexualities with whom he’s shared changing rooms and dressing rooms and locker rooms over the years. Just, most of them he hasn’t been keeping sex club secrets from. 

And that’s it, really. That’s the weirdness. Nothing to do with Nick’s dog-damaged phone or Harry’s age or the fact he’d tried out for the X-factor. Nick’s terrible at secrets, and if he and Harry are going to be friends, he needs to tell him. Though probably not in a changing room at Topman. 

“Hi,” Nick says, handing over the shirt once the door is shut behind him. “Hi. How’s things?” He’s not looking at where the waist of the definitely tight jeans rides just below the white stripe on the black M&S pants Harry’s got under them. He’s not looking because that makes it easier not to blurt out something about how at least Harry’s wearing pants today. Otherwise he might be looking. The jeans are tight, and it’s a good choice. 

“Hiya,” Harry replies, his face crinkling with the force of his smile. “Thanks for this. My shirt today’s all stretched out, and I thought maybe that was making the jeans look bad.” Nick sneaks another glance down at the denim stretched across Harry’s hips and hugging his thighs, curving over his arse in the reflection in the mirror. There is not a shirt in the world baggy enough to make them look bad. Unless it’s so baggy it comes down to his knees or something. 

“Uh huh,” Nick says as Harry pulls the black tee over his head. 

“What do you think?” Smoothing the shirt over his belly, Harry twists to examine his own arse in the mirror, before turning completely to look at himself from the front. “I’m just not sure about how they—“ Harry waves his hands over his crotch in a way Nick could be meant to interpret as ‘highlight my rather large for a seventeen-year-old bulge’, or ‘squeeze my junk’, or possibly both. 

“Well, they definitely _look_ good,” Nick says. “I mean—“ To his alarm, Nick waves his own hands in the direction of Harry’s crotch, or at least in the direction of its reflection. “Can you sit?” There’s a little stool in the corner of the cubicle. It’s currently hosting Harry’s discarded street clothes and a bag from HMV. “Let me.” Nick gathers up the stuff and steps back to let Harry test sitting down. 

“Urgh,” Harry says when his arse touches down. “Your jeans are quite tight. Is there a secret?” 

Every pair of trousers Nick’s seen Harry in so far, the crotch hung half-way to his knees. He’s probably used to just dangling. “Pick a side,” Nick says. “Let it know where it belongs.” He tries to be as matter-of-fact as possible, but Harry’s already smirking, and it’s an utterly ridiculous conversation. 

Harry pops up again, then, without so much as a by your leave, shoves his hand down the front of his pants to adjust himself, gives his hips a little wiggle. “Oh!” he says. “That’s much better.” This time when he sits there’s no little pained wrinkle between his brows. “The seam was all— ugh before.” 

Nick’s had his own experiences with seams that are ugh and can sympathize. “Glad they’re better. Are they—“ It’s clear Harry’s new to skinny jeans. “What’s the new look in aid of?” 

“I’ve a friend,” Harry says. “She’s in marketing, shops and stuff, and she gave me a gift card. Said my wardrobe could use a face lift. Apparently everything I have is _two thousand and late_.” 

The sound that comes out of Nick’s mouth is half snort half laugh, and he’s not too proud to admit it. Harry’s friend’s song references are as out of date as baggy jeans, but if her delivery was half as good as Harry’s, she gets points anyway. “I like your friend,” Nick says. 

“She’s great,” Harry agrees. “She takes me out sometimes, places I wouldn’t get to go otherwise, and, you know, she’s fun.” 

Given Harry’s tone, Nick can’t help wondering if some of the fun they have is conducted with Harry’s unfashionable clothes on her bedroom floor. 

“Well, I think she’ll approve of your choices,” Nick says, indicating Harry’s new outfit with a tilt of his chin. 

“Do you approve, though?” Harry rubs his hands over his chest, making his nipples perk up even in the warmth of the shop. He is a menace.

“I think you look hideous. Like a troll. We should find you a bridge to lurk under immediately.” 

“Excellent,” Harry says. “You can be my Billy Goat Grim.” 

A complete and total menace.

 

After he changes back into his stretched-out green shirt with a dinosaur on and his old baggy Levis—while Nick carefully checks messages he’s already read on his phone—Harry gets the skinny jeans in dark blue and black, three new shirts in size small, and a leather belt with a silver buckle. The lad at the till hands his giftcard back when he’s rung him up, which, how much was on there if there’s money left over? 

“Gagging for a drink,” Harry says. “Did you need anything else in here? Or there’s a Starbucks on James Street.” 

“You’d dare set foot in the competition?” Nick teases. 

Harry sticks his tongue out. What on anyone else would be a saucy dart out and in, on Harry is a slow, sensual slide, which should be at odds with his bright, laughing eyes, but isn’t. “Don’t have much choice,” he says once he’s put his tongue away again. “We’re the only one in London; the rest are all up north.”

Coffee’s all very well, but Nick wouldn’t mind lunch if he’s honest; he came out without breakfast. “Or we could eat,” he says. 

“Mmm.” Harry does a soft smacking thing with his mouth like he’s tasting his own lips. “D’you fancy Wagamama?” 

It’ll be crowded, and the long communal tables don’t lend themselves to intimate conversation, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. Plus, the food is decent, and quick, and it’s just round the corner. “Sounds good,” he says. 

They have to wait, and end up next to each other rather than across, squeezed in between some Americans about Harry’s age who are happy to have given their chaperone the slip for a few hours, and a woman sitting across from two girls who look bored, but not quite bored enough to do anything drastic. Nick hopes. The arrangement means Nick can’t easily look at Harry, but he does get to spend half of lunch trying to figure out if Harry’s foot is pressed up against his on purpose or just because Harry’s got shopping bags in the way. 

Once the Americans are gone, Nick moves over a bit in case it’s the latter, but Harry’s foot follows. “I’m glad you could come,” Harry says, just as Nick’s filled his mouth with an inadvisable volume of noodles that means he can’t reply. “I hate shopping for clothes on my own. I used to make my sister help when I lived at home—she’s dead honest and won’t let me buy anything too ugly—but Zayn’s useless. He looks good in _anything_ , so he doesn’t care.” 

Nick would argue that Harry looks good in anything, too, but he’s seen the proof that a skinny jean and well-fitted shirt is better than his current ensemble, so there’s still the matter of degrees. “I seemed like a good victim?” he asks once his mouth is finally empty.

“Your clothes look good when you want to,” Harry answers, giving Nick’s current outfit of cutoffs and one of last year’s tees under a faded denim button down a look like he suspects Nick didn’t want to today. 

“Hey. I always look amazing.”

“Yeah, but sometimes your clothes look amazing too.” Harry tries to keep a straight face, but ends up breaking just as Nick does, and they both laugh at his joke, even though he doesn’t deserve it. 

 

After lunch, they walk down Oxford street, window shopping and talking about Nick’s job and Harry’s experience of London and what he misses about home. Nick was right that Harry’d grown up not far from him, though from the sounds of it he’d not quite made it to the clubs on Canal street before he headed down to London to follow his music dreams. Nick tries to bring up having seen him out that night with Aimee, but the streets are always too thick with people, and there’s never a good opening. “Are you doing anything tonight?” Harry asks after nearly five hours of wandering and conversation. Nick wishes he could say no, but he’s meeting his old roommate Henry for dinner, and hasn’t seen him in almost two months, so doesn’t want to miss it. 

“I had fun, though,” he says after making his apologies. “We should do it again sometime.” 

“I wasn’t too weird?” Harry asks, like he’s joking, mostly, but Nick senses underneath the callback to their meet-up at the pub, Harry really wants to know the answer. 

Years of being the bratty little brother and sarcastic BFF almost make Nick not give him what he wants, but something about Harry tells decades of habit to fuck off, and Nick finds himself saying, “Not weird at all, actually,” and—dear god— _ruffling Harry’s hair_. 

Harry catches Nick’s hand as he tries to take it back, and plants a kiss in the center of his palm. Inevitably, Nick’s fingers curl around Harry’s face, his fingertips snagging on the thick curls over his ear, brushing the angle of his jaw. It’s unimaginably intimate for so brief a moment, making Nick’s breath catch and his dick jump. “Oh,” Nick says faintly.

“Maybe I spoke too soon,” Harry says, dropping Nick’s hand like it bit him. “Thanks for everything, gotta go, text you later, bye.” Then he bounces on his toes to kiss Nick’s cheek, and takes off for the tube entrance at a sort of skipping lope Nick couldn’t describe if he tried. 

“Yeah,” Nick says to the empty air where Harry was stood. “Not weird at all.” 

Bemused, Nick turns to find a taxi. He needs to shower and change before dinner with Henry.

*

 

At the last minute, Nick and Henry’s third roommate from back in the day, Gillian, escapes her supposedly inescapable conflicting plans and meets them at the restaurant, so their night is very boozy and very late. Silver-tongued—or tequila-tongued at least—Nick manages to spin an entertaining and truth-sprinkled tale about his day that avoids mentioning he was with a teenaged barista neither Gellz nor Henry have met. He’s not at all sure how he manages it, but he’s very proud of himself. 

It’s not that Nick’s ashamed of Harry, it’s just he’s afraid he’d only make Harry sound like a piece of arse if he tried to describe him, and that’s not how— He isn’t sure exactly what Harry _is_ , but it’s possible he’s already thinking about the ways Harry might get along with his other friends, and Nick doesn’t want to give them the wrong impression before that has a chance to happen. Besides. He should probably start with Pixie. She’s that much closer to Harry’s age, and anyway, thinks it’s her mission in life to get Nick laid, where Henry thinks it’s his mission to take the piss. 

After they’ve shut down the restaurant—Nick makes sure they leave an American-sized tip, because he suspects they overstayed their welcome by nearly an hour—Nick drags Gellz back with him to his flat. He tries to get Henry to come too, but Henry sees no reason he should sleep on Nick’s sofa when he’s a perfectly good bed of his own with a perfectly good man in it. Gillian’s bed is empty this week, and she’ll go anywhere if a bottle of wine’s on offer. Nick has a nice white in his fridge. They drink it on the sofa scorned by Henry while Nick tries to make her play guess-the-artist with a bunch of new music nicked from the station, and it’s after 2 o’clock by the time they pour each other into bed.

 

Given it’s still dark when Nick wakes up, Gillian’s fist heavy on his cheekbone and her snores rattling his very tender skull, he can’t have slept for more than a couple of hours. Shoving Gellz’s arm back her side of the bed makes her roll over, which helps with the snoring, but Nick’s bladder is in the way of him slipping back to sleep. 

His eyes in the bathroom mirror are mere slits in the puffy terrain of his face, and his forehead is the size of the M6 at Birmingham, and what the fuck does Harry smiley-face Styles _actually_ want with him? What does he think Nick can give him? “Shut up,” Nick tells his reflection, because it’s four in the morning and he’s teetering on that barbed-wire fence between drunk and hungover, and he knows better than to let his brain actually _think_ under these circumstances, but his reflection sticks its tongue out and says, _He must want something, Grimmy._ Nick fights back with two paracetamol and a double handful of water from the tap, and heads back to bed. 

As a rule, Nick won’t wallow, but Gillian’s snoring again, and determined to treat Nick to her best starfish impressions, and London’s entire bird population is intent on sharing their pre-dawn chorus in his garden. There’s no mirror in Nick’s bedroom, but his reflection came back to bed with him anyway.

The thing is, Topman isn’t Gucci, hell, it isn’t even Zara, but Harry bought at least a hundred quid’s worth of clothes today. That’s a hell of a gift card to throw at a friend just because their wardrobe looks tired. It’s more, ‘thanks for the orgasms, and also, I’d like it if you looked a little less like I picked you up at the local skate park next time we go somewhere we might meet my colleagues.’ Harry’d argued when Nick tried to pay for his lunch, had paid for his own, but maybe he was lulling Nick into a false sense of security. Or maybe he only feels justified taking gifts after the orgasms happen. Nick wants orgasms, but he doesn’t want Harry to feel like he _owes_ them to him. Not unless it’s like a blow-job for blow-job situation. Harry seems like he’s too polite to leave a guy hanging. 

Maybe his ‘friend’ in marketing is actually a John. A Jane? What’s it called when a woman picks up a rent boy? Is Harry a rent boy? Does he only want Nick because he thinks DJs are rich? Nick isn’t rich. Well, he’s not— He could probably afford a rent boy if he wanted one. For a while anyway. He isn’t Richard Gere or anything though. And even the nicest shoes in his wardrobe didn’t cost as much as a pair of Frye boots like the man Harry was sucking off in the club was wearing. 

“W’ever you’re stressing about, _stop it_ ,” Gillian growls. “You’re flopping around like a fish.” 

“I’m not,” Nick says. Possibly sullenly. Okay. Totally sullenly. What does Gillian know about fish anyway? “What do you know about fish anyway?”

“More than you.” She scoots closer and pulls Nick into a cuddle. “Sleep. It’ll be fine in the morning.” Like she has a hundred times before, she strokes the spot behind his ear and hums softly at him until he has no choice but to obey. 

 

She’s not totally wrong, but she’s not one-hundred percent correct either. Once he’s had a coffee, a diet coke, and half a packet of Bourbons Gillian found in the back of a cupboard, he feels not only better, but quite a lot less like he’s part of a complex sugar-daddy plot being masterminded by the teenaged baristas of West London. He’d had fun with Harry, and Nick is as close to certain as he can be that it wasn’t one sided. 

But he can’t dismiss his long-dark-teatime thoughts completely. He knows his own ego well enough that he’s not going to end up in a situation where he’s unsure if the bloke he’s shagging likes him enough to do it without the promise of some dosh at the end of the night, so if that’s what shagging Harry would mean, they’re just going to have to be friends without benefits. He can do friends without benefits. 

It’s just, Harry looks like he’d have good benefits. And Nick has reason to know.

Oh. Maybe that’s what this is about. It’s just maybe possible Nick’s looking for an excuse to not have to tell Harry about having watched him like a total creep.

 

Then, Harry doesn’t text him anyway. Not on Sunday when Nick’s out with Gellz and Henry and David and Pixie, or on the air with Annie, not on Monday when he’s doing all the laundry he should have got done over the weekend and didn’t, not Monday night when he’s doing his show. Not on Tuesday either, when Nick’s starting to feel like a complete arse for having thought that Harry wanted so much as the time of day. 

Tuesday night he’s about to hit play on a Fat Boy Slim record when Beth calls his attention to the screen that lets him read the incoming texts. _need some advice,_ it starts. _what do you do when your phone gets stolen and it’s the only place you had the phone number of the bloke you fancy?_ It’s signed _Harry. London, W1_. Fuck. _Fuck._ Beth expects him to say something, he knows, but he hits play on the track anyway because he just needs a second. 

There are probably at least fifty men named Harry living in W1. Nothing like that many listening to his show, but it still doesn’t mean it’s _his_ Harry. Not that Harry’s _his_ precisely, but anyway. It might just be a random bloke who happened to have his mobile stolen. A random gay bloke. Or a lady named Harry, maybe. That’s also possible. A not-gay lady. Nick needs a drink. A stiff one. But he’ll have to make do with the bottle of water at his elbow for now. Beth looks at him oddly as he takes a gulp. 

“We never get fun texts,” Beth says. “You gonna answer him?” 

Fun, she says, like Nick’s stomach isn’t doing the tango. Nick makes a show of reading the text again, and shrugs. “Might as well.” There’s twenty-three seconds before he can come back on air without cutting off the track mid lyric. He does the countdown in his head like he’s back on his first show at Uni. 

“That was Fat Boy Slim, and I’m Nick Grimshaw, and it’s Tuesday night. But someone obviously has his days mixed up, thinks it’s Sunday and time for the Surgery. We’ve just had a text from Harry, here in London. Apparently he’s lost his phone, and with it, the phone number of the man of his dreams. Very sad, that. Poor Harry. Poor man of his dreams. What if this bloke is sitting at home right now, crying into his cornflakes because the lovely Harry isn’t ringing him? Maybe not, though. Harry doesn’t say if dream bloke even knows Harry fancies him.” Nick needs to know if he’s giving air time to some random, or if Harry is trying to reach him the only way he can think of. “What do you think, Beth? Should we try to get Harry on the phone? Find out more information?” 

Beth gives him a thumbs up and starts dialing. “I’m no Aled,” Nick continues, stalling while Beth tries to get their caller. “But I have been known to lose a phone number. Standard disclaimers still apply, BBC is not responsible blah blah blah. Oh, look, it seems we have a caller on line two.” Nick picks up the line. “Is this Harry?” 

“This is Harry,” Harry says, slow drawl laced with amusement. There’s no mistaking that voice. Definitely not some random. 

“Harry, Harry, Harry. What are you doing letting people steal your phone?” 

“I was pick-pocketed on the tube.” 

Nick can’t help wondering if it was on his way home from their day shopping. “That’s terrible! And now you can’t ring your friend?” 

“No. I got a new one on insurance and all, but I lost all my numbers.” Now Harry sounds sulky, which is about how Nick would feel if this had happened to him. “Between my mum and my flatmate I did get most of them back, but this one bloke, you know? I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what to do.”

“And you thought I could help?” 

Harry laughs, a low, sweet chuckle that settles in Nick’s bones. “Was my flatmate’s idea if I’m being honest. He said, ‘Why don’t you text in to Radio One?’” 

“Makes perfect sense,” Nick says, lacing the words with sarcasm, because it makes no sense at all, really, to all the people listening who have no idea that Nick is the mystery dream bloke. Nick hopes he’s the mystery dream bloke.

“I figured it was worth a shot,” Harry says, playing along. “You never know how things are going to work out. More people listen to your show than read the missed connections, probably, right?” 

Oh god. Had Harry put a notice up on Craigslist or somewhere? “Don’t know that anyone compiles ratings for the missed connections pages,” Nick says. This is possibly the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened to him. 

Never mind. It’s not even close. But it’s the most ridiculous thing that’s happened to him this summer for certain. 

“So, yeah,” Harry says. “Can I give a message to the bloke?” 

“Keep it clean,” Nick warns. “We’re after the watershed and all, but you’re still on the radio.” 

“And my mum’s probably listening,” Harry says. Which— Okay. Nick’s not going to think about that right now, because it’s too much. “Nothing dirty. Just maybe he could come by my work sometime this week? And we could exchange numbers again. If he wants.” 

“Well, I hope he’s listening. You seem like a lovely lad, and I’m sure he’s been wondering what happened to you.”

“I am lovely,” Harry says. “I just hope he’ll forgive me.” 

“If he’s half as nice as you say, I’m sure he will. But we’ve got to let you go now, before my producer clubs me round the ear and plays the next track herself.” 

“Yeah, okay.” Harry takes a deep breath. “I’ll just— Bye. Thank you for calling me back.” 

Ugh, Nick could keep him on the line for the rest of the night. But, “Bye. Bye. Bye bye bye,” he says and ends the call. “Well, I know what my dad would have to say about that,” Nick continues, starting the next song, which has a helpful twenty-eight second lead-in. “That’s the trouble with all this mobile phone malarkey. No one remembers anything for themselves anymore.” With a practiced flick, he fades up the track and down his mic, and takes another big gulp of water. 

“What was _that_?” Beth asks as soon as he’s swallowed his drink. “I didn’t expect you to talk to him for eternity.” 

It’s a bad idea, probably, but Nick can’t possibly keep his excitement bottled up for another hour, so he says, “I’m the bloke whose number Harry lost.” 

Beth squeals, making Nick jump, and darts around the desk to slap him about the head and shoulders while laughing and shouting, “I can’t bloody believe you, Nick Grimshaw!” It’s by far the most animated he’s seen her in the time they’ve worked together. 

“So I hope you’ve kept his number,” Nick says, fending her off. “No hitting the talent. I’m sure there’s rules and regulations and forms and such.” There’s always forms with the BBC, he’s found. 

“I haven’t,” she says, hitting him one last time on the arm before subsiding to lean hipcocked on his desk. “But we can probably get it out of the history somehow.” She glances at the display and sees there’s still almost three minutes on the track. Nick’d picked a long one. “Flirting! On air! With a boy! A boy you’ve _shagged_!” She’s so incredulous she’s squeaking, and grinning so wide it hurts Nick’s cheeks to look at her. 

Wait. Shagged? “We haven’t shagged,” Nick corrects her. He doesn’t add the “not yet” that he can’t help hoping for. 

“He sure sounded like he wanted to,” she says. Nick prays she’s right. 

They can, in fact, get Harry’s number from the system with little difficulty, and he puts it in his phone, replacing the old one, but keeping the :) in Harry’s name. One eye on Beth to make sure she’s not going to come back and start hitting him again, he sends Harry a message. _Thanks for coming on air, and playing along._ He debates signing off with his name, but figures Harry will get who it is from context clues. 

He does. _Did I do okay?_ he sends back. 

Seventy-one seconds before the next link. _You did great._ Nick looks at the clock again, figures in for a penny and all that, and adds, _Do you want to try getting a drink again, or do you have to be up early for work?_

The reply comes just as he has to go back on; there isn’t even time to look at it, resulting in probably the shortest link he’s ever done. But he can argue he was making up time for taking so long on the link with Harry earlier if anyone tries to give him flack about it. 

_Yes,_ the message says. _I have to be up early for work and YES I want to get a drink. Zayn’s out tonight if you want to come to mine? It’s not much but._

Nick tends to do the inviting when it comes to boys. You know what you’re getting with your own place, and it’s somehow easier to show a lad the door than leave without seeming rude. Plus, he barely knows Harry, and should almost definitely not go over to a seventeen-year-old’s flat at midnight. Especially when said boy has to be at work at the crack of arse in the morning. _What’s your address?_ he replies. 

*

 

Harry and Zayn’s flat is above a Ladbrokes, up three flights of stairs that smell vaguely of piss, at least on the ground floor. Harry has to come down to meet him, as apparently the buzzer isn’t working. “Hasn’t worked since we moved in,” Harry admits as they’re climbing the stairs. “I shouldn’t have— You’re used to much nicer, I expect.” 

The look on his face makes Nick want to cuddle him, and he reaches out to squeeze Harry’s wrist reassuringly. “You should have seen the first place I lived when I moved down,” he says. “And the second. And, actually, god. The third was probably the worst. Have you woken up with a mouse in your skivvies yet?” 

“We’ve had mice in the kitchen cupboard,” Harry says.

“No. I mean the pants you’re actually wearing. In bed. At the time.” 

That startles a laugh from Harry’s chest, and he gives him a sideways look and a shy grin. “Seriously? Like it was touching your—“ 

“Right on my knob,” Nick confirms. “I had a friend to stay, and I thought at first he was giving me a cheery wake-up. But nope.” 

They’re at Harry’s door now, and he gives Nick another one of those shy smiles before he unlocks it and lets them in. 

It’s small. Smaller than Nick’s first studio, even, and he’d been the only one in that. Almost half of it is taken up by a queen-size mattress on nothing but the box spring, with a pink square Ikea table on one side and a crate stuffed with books on the other. There’s a sink, a fridge, a single cupboard and a kettle in one corner, two beanbags that have seen better days, and a clothes rail on wobbly legs, with two more crates shoved underneath. “Cozy,” Nick says. 

“The blue beanbag has more beans,” Harry says. “If you want to take that one.” It’s been ages since Nick sat on a beanbag, but Pixie went through a phase where she made everyone sit on cushions on her trendy tile floor, and it’s bound to be more comfortable than that. 

“Blue one it is. I brought wine, if you want?” Nick pulls it out of his messenger bag, pleased at the delight on Harry’s face.

“Perfect,” Harry says, taking it. “I was going to offer you a beer, but we’ve only got one, and it’s not in the fridge.” 

Nick makes an exaggerated _yuck_ face. “I’ll take wine.” 

Harry doesn’t have wine glasses, but Nick didn’t expect them, and it’s not like he hasn’t drunk pinot grigio out of a rinsed-out McDonalds coffee cup in his time, so the juice glass Harry gives him will do quite nicely. Harry settles into the grey beanbag next to him with a mug that has Felix the cat on it. They clink glasses and each take a sip. It’s not the best wine Nick’s ever bought, but Harry seems to like it. 

Over the first half of the bottle, they talk about Harry’s pick-pocketing experience, and how he tried to be a good citizen and go to the cops and how useless that was, and how worried Harry’d been that he’d never get to speak to Nick again. He’s funny, much funnier than you might expect someone talking about theft to be, especially when he gets to the part about trying to ask his mum for all the phone numbers of his family without letting on that he’d made his mark on the London crime stats. It’s comfortable, and fun, and Nick’s reminded that five hours of shopping with Harry had seemed like it flew past. 

They do not talk about Nick’s worries that Harry only spoke to him in the first place to get a recording contract, or sex and gift cards, because Nick wants Harry to keep liking him, and those fears seem silly in the light of Harry’s carelessly genuine charm. 

When a lull in the conversation prompts Harry to get up to get them the last of the wine, Nick’s eye falls on the focal point of the room. “So you and Zayn—“ he asks, waving in the direction of the bed they clearly share. 

“We’re not—“ Harry says. “Zayn’s mostly straight. And he’s my best friend. I mean we do— sometimes you’re randy, you know, and it’s not like there’s a lot of privacy to have a wank, and what boy’s going to turn down a blow job? He’s good about giving hand jobs in return.” 

In the frustration of Harry not texting, then the excitement of talking to him on air and the easy pleasure of their conversation, Nick had almost managed to convince himself it didn’t matter about the whole sex-spying thing, but it does. He has to tell him. And if there is ever going to be a better time to bring up having seen Harry give a blow job, Nick cannot possibly imagine what that would look like. That doesn’t mean he knows what to say. 

“Mostly, we don’t have room for two beds,” Harry says, continuing to answer Nick’s question, as though Nick isn’t having a mini nervous breakdown in the corner. “But also mum let me bring mine down from Cheshire when Zayn and I decided to stay after we didn’t make X-Factor.” 

Nick can do it. If Harry’s upset, at the end of a bottle is the perfect time to make an exit. Just open your mouth and say something, Nicholas. “Must make it hard to bring anyone home,” Nick says. 

With no idea things are about to get awkward, Harry sits, his left knee pressed against Nick’s right thigh. Nick realizes Harry’s scooted his seat closer every time he’s sat down with refills. It’s adorable, and reminds him in a good way of being back at school, and if Harry could stop being so cute for just two minutes, Nick could drop his bombshell. 

“It does,” Harry agrees. “I don’t mind it so much as Zayn I don’t think. Lots of the women I meet have their own places, and with blokes you can— There’s less need for a bed.” 

Right. You can just do it up against a wall between a set of faux-medieval stocks and a whipping post. “Clubs,” Nick says, determined to go through with this now he’s started. “Break from dancing, blow job in the bogs—“ he takes a deep breath. “Or other kinds of clubs. Where—“ It’s not right for Harry not to know. It’s not right at all; Nick still can’t say the words. 

But, “Sex clubs,” Harry says for him. He’s looking more at where Nick’s holding his glass of wine against his chest than at Nick’s face, but his voice is steady. “I’ve been to one of those a few times. My friend’s brother owns it. Put me on the VIP list without exactly asking my age.” 

Of course he did. How many friends does Harry have, exactly? And are any of them his age? “In SoHo?” Nick asks. 

“Yeah,” Harry says, little crinkle between his brows. 

Nick just has to do it. No more stalling. “God,” he says. “Don’t hate me.” He presses his leg against Harry’s knee, just a brief extra pressure, an attempt to reassure, though he’s not sure if it’s meant for him or Harry. 

“Okaaay,” Harry says skeptically. 

“I saw you there one night. Back in April when Aimee was visiting.”

Harry blinks.

“I didn’t recognize you at first, from behind and all. And then— I’m sorry. I should have left when I realised I knew you, but. Well.” Nick can only shrug. 

The frown on Harry’s face convinces Nick he’s about to be thrown out, but then Harry says, “April? Oh. The American. Fancy boots and handy with a hogtie?” Maybe that’s his frown of concentration. Nick can’t help noticing Harry’s knee is still touching him. His fingers are still wrapped loosely around his mug. He’s not certain what it means, but he’s taking it as a good thing. 

“Is that what it’s called, what he did to your arms?” 

“No,” Harry says. “That’s— actually, I don’t know if it has a special name. It’s fucking hard to move with your arms like that, though. But hogtie is when your hands are tied to your feet behind your back.” 

That’s an image Nick’s not getting out of his head any time soon. “Oh,” he says, going for matter-of-fact and falling pretty wide of the mark.

“Are you—?” Harry looks at him closely. “You don’t have to feel bad,” he says. “I wouldn’t go there if I didn’t like, you know, people watching me and stuff.” 

Nick shrugs again. “Yeah, but, strangers are one thing. It’s different if it’s like—“ 

“Someone you fancy?” Harry finishes. 

Relieved, bemused, feeling like he’s losing track of the conversation, Nick is at a rare loss for words. 

“To me it doesn’t seem that different than how I know all the things about you from the radio, and like interviews and stuff. I mean, I don’t know if you like to be tied up or anything, but I know your parents are called Pete and Eileen, and you’ve snogged Alexa Chung, and maybe Pixie Geldof, and look better in a denim mini than half the girls I know, and so—“ It’s Harry’s turn to shrug. “Look at it this way: It saves us the awkward, ‘I like to be tied up and have my face fucked’ conversation?”

Nick can’t argue with that, so he drains the last of his wine. 

“I do, by the way,” Harry continues. “That wasn’t a one-time deal. Just, not so much when I have to be at work by seven. But you could—if you want. I changed the sheets? You could stay for a bit. We could make out; I could give you a hand job.” 

“You are—“ Nick’s laugh is more a nervous giggle than his usual burst of mirth, but it releases the last of the fear that Harry won’t forgive him. “Never mind blokes saying no to blow jobs. Does anyone ever say no to _anything_ with you?” 

“Simon Cowell said no to me being the next big thing,” Harry says wryly. But then he gives Nick one of those sunshine smiles of his. “But yeah. Mostly not. Is this you saying yes, then?” 

“Somehow, Styles, it is.” 

 

Nick is used to hormones and instinct and crashing together, usually in the gloom of club lighting and fog machines, and feels a bit like he’s just accepted an invitation to a teddy bear tea party: After Dark edition. “So,” he says, still wedged in a beanbag chair, knee to knee with the object of his affections, but totally unsure what happens next.  
   
What happens next is Harry rolling off his beanbag to haul Nick to his feet. He lets the momentum propel them the three steps to the bed, where he collapses back in a sort of graceless slow-motion fall that pulls Nick down half on top of him. “Hiya,” he says, that utterly disarming smile inches from Nick’s face.  
   
“I still have my shoes on,” Nick responds. Because that is absolutely the smoothest line to use under the circumstances.  
   
“Yeah,” Harry says. “Me too.” Then he cups Nick’s jaw in one warm hand and they’re kissing.  
   
 _Shoes_ , the small annoying part of Nick’s brain that doesn’t want him to get laid tries one last time, but it’s not like they’re even on the bed enough for it to matter, and Harry certainly doesn’t seem to care, and Nick gets a hand under Harry’s shirt, spreading his fingers across the warm skin over Harry’s ribs, which shuts up any part of him that isn’t saying _yes_.  
   
Harry’s a gorgeous kisser, pliant and eager at once, hands moving on Nick’s face and shoulder, into his hair and down his back, hips hitching, legs moving to tangle with Nick’s. He’s at least half-hard already, and that corner of Nick’s brain screams _SEVENTEEN_ at him loud enough that Nick stops kissing Harry and instead leans over him, propped on one elbow, watches as his eyes flutter open and a moue of disappointment puts a crease between his eyebrows.  
   
 “Niiiick,” Harry moans. “Why’d you—?” With the hand on Nick’s neck, he tries to get Nick’s lips back in kissing distance.  
   
He’s beautiful, flushed with wine and kisses, lips plump and pink and parted wetly, and yes, he is seventeen, but he’s hardly the little brother who snuck into a party he shouldn’t be at. He knew what he wanted when he invited Nick over here, and long before that. Nick should definitely be kissing him.  
   
He says, “You went—“ Jesus it’s hard to breathe and look at Harry at the same time. “Went to the trouble to change the sheets. We could at least take our shoes off, get on the bed?” Nick’s not going to look too closely at this shoe obsession, because he has a feeling it has something to do with wanting to be someone Harry finds worth taking off his shoes for.  
   
“God,” Harry breathes. “Nick.” His legs are thrashing in a way Nick hopes means he’s kicking his shoes off, and then his hands go for his flies, and— _oh_ —apparently they’re taking off more than just their shoes. Before Nick can even completely roll off him, Harry’s wriggled his jeans down to his knees, dragging his boxers low enough Nick can see that his pubes are a shade darker than his hair, thick over his cock, sparse as they edge toward his thighs. The bulge of his prick is fat along the underside of the waistband, longer than Nick’s was as a teenager, and positively _calling_ to his hand. 

“Can I?” Nick says, hand already hovering, fingers twitching. 

“Fuck,” Harry answers, pushing Nick’s hand onto the length of him. “Wanted you since— _shit_ —since I was fourteen.” 

“Ages, then,” Nick can’t help saying, voice laden with irony. 

Caught up in grinding against Nick’s palm, Harry misses that part. “Forever,” he whines. “Your fucking _hands_.” Nick is good with his hands, it’s true. And he still has his damn shoes on and is hanging half off the bed. Nick gives Harry a squeeze, a friendly be-right-back, and pushes himself upright. 

“You are trying to kill me, aren’t you?” Harry mutters. “Gem always warned me, be careful what you wish for.” 

_Gem?_ Nick bends down to pull off his shoes and socks, then, remembering Harry’d mentioned hand jobs, and figuring Harry started it, undoes his jeans. “Budge up,” Nick says. Harry scrambles to comply. 

Reclining on the pillows, his shirt rucked up and his boxers slipped down, thighs spread in invitation, Harry is even more tempting than he’d been bound and kneeling at the club, and Nick doesn’t stall stepping out of his jeans. 

“Is it weird that I really love your legs?” Harry asks, eyes intent on Nick’s movements. 

“Weird if you didn’t,” Nick says, only mostly kidding. His legs are definitely his best feature, and he’s not shy to admit it. 

“You should bring them up here,” Harry tells him. “And your hands. And your mouth. You’re a really great kisser. I was hoping.” 

Nick has never in his life met someone with so little guile. Or with so much skill at sounding sincere. He bites back something cheesy like, “You’re not so bad yourself,” because Nick is not so skilled as Harry, even though in this case he would mean it. 

Instead, he says, “So, no bondage or face fucking tonight, but can I suck you off?” There’s a tiny wet patch at the tip of Harry’s cock, and Nick wants to make it bigger. 

The sound Harry makes can only be described as a whimper. 

“Is that a yes?” Nick asks, liking the way Harry squirms while he waits. 

“Yes,” Harry says. “Yes, just— Come _here_.” 

Advantage to not having a footboard, it’s easy to crawl up between Harry’s thighs, get comfortable there. Nick smooths his palms over Harry’s hips, traces the outline of his dick with one thumb, drops a kiss on the inside of one thigh. He knows he’s teasing, but he can’t help it. Harry’s so responsive. The way he moves, the little sounds he makes, and the way his dick jumps when Nick hasn’t even touched it yet. “Niiiick,” he says, breathy and needy and just what Nick likes. 

“I’m getting there,” Nick says, kissing his other thigh. Harry subsides, but Nick can see him gripping the sheets out of the corner of his eye. And he can smell him, boy and sex and clean laundry, and Nick doesn’t want to wait anymore either. 

He licks him through his pants, first. Where the head of his cock bulges, sloping down to that damp patch at the tip. Just there, Nick presses a kiss, sucking a little, tongue darting out to taste. When Harry groans, Nick opens wider, uses the flat of his tongue to rub at Harry’s dick with the wet cotton of his boxers. The precome makes it slick, the saliva makes it drag, and the combination of sensations makes Harry jump and twitch under Nick’s hands. “That good?” Nick asks, letting his breath puff over the wet cloth. 

“Fuuuuuck,” Harry drawls, so Nick gets back to it. 

Trapped in pants held taut under Nick’s fingers, Harry’s cock can’t get away, and Nick can kiss it, gentle and soft, work just the tip with the point of his tongue, envelop the head in the wet heat of his mouth, then blow cold air on it from pursed lips. It’s nothing Nick’s ever done much before, having tended toward getting it out and getting down to business, but it’s _fun_ , the same way window shopping with Harry had been, enjoyable even though they hadn’t really bought anything. 

Well, okay, not _quite_ the same way. Window shopping hadn’t made Nick hard. 

“Swear to god, Nick,” Harry finally complains when Nick goes from sucking heat to thin stream of cold for the fourth or fifth time. His hands are no longer fisted in the sheets, but trying to get past the cage of Nick’s hands to push his pants down and out of the way. His eyes are wide and wild, and the way he’s looking at Nick it’s like he doesn’t even know what his own hands are doing. It’s hotter than Nick can take, and all at once he relents, letting Harry get his fingers under the elastic, even moving enough so Harry has room to kick the twisted fabric off. Then he’s back, hands sure on Harry’s thighs, hips, belly, guiding Harry’s cock into his mouth. 

Not that Nick’s selfish—he’s _not_. It’s just toilet quickies don’t tend to lend themselves to reciprocating blow jobs—but it’s been a while since he did this. And Harry’s not exactly small. Nick keeps his teeth covered at first, but then Harry bucks at the wrong moment, and Nick jerks, and that leads to a definite teeth on cock situation. But not, to Nick’s surprise, to hissed curses and hands pushing him away. Instead, Harry grabs Nick’s hair, moans low and broken, and throbs on his tongue. 

Nick was already pulling off to apologise, so he catches Harry’s come on the corner of his mouth, on his chin, on his cheek, and then in his hand as he jerks him through it and gets his eyes out of the danger zone. “Oh,” he says instead of “sorry”. Because apparently he did nothing to apologise for. 

With the hand in his hair, Harry pulls him up, impatient when Nick doesn’t move fast enough, and wipes the come off his face even as he’s leaning up to kiss him. Nick tries not to flatten Harry underneath him, but Harry’s not having it, wraps his arms around Nick’s back, legs around his thighs, and gives him no choice. “That was amazing,” he murmurs against Nick’s face, a precursor to little kitten licks along his cheekbone and down his jaw…

“Are you licking your jizz off my face?” Nick asks.

“It seems polite,” Harry says. “I didn’t get a chance to ask if I could come on you.” 

“It seems—“ Nick laughs, a chuckle at first, then manic hitching giggles that he tries to bury in Harry’s neck. Harry is _ridiculous_ , and Nick maybe kind of totally _adores_ him already. 

“It does,” Harry says, and his voice sounds pouty, but Nick’s lying on top of him. He can feel him starting to laugh along. 

“Polite?” Nick asks, and looks at him lying there all poochy bottom lip and sparkling eyes under the frightful nest of bedhair he’s got. Nick’s grin might split his face in two.

“Kiss me some more,” Harry says. 

“Are you going to lick me?”

“Just kisses.” 

Nick kisses him. It’s hard to stop grinning at first, but Harry grabs his face, presses his cheeks with his palms, and kisses him hard and hungry, and Nick’s body switches from laughter to _unnngh_ without his brain having to tell it to. The hard on he got blowing Harry is back in full force, and Harry clearly notices. 

With the skill of someone used to being underneath, Harry tilts them until he can get a hand on Nick’s cock, with half of Nick’s weight still pinning him to the bed. There’s not much room, so he’s doing tight, short strokes right up by the head, which is not Nick’s usual style, but with Harry’s tongue in his mouth, with his leg hooked over Nick’s knee, his free hand trying to gain purchase in the short hair at Nick’s neck, it’s close enough to perfect to make no nevermind, and Nick’s coming in an embarrassingly short time. 

“Sorry,” Harry says while Nick’s catching his breath. 

“Sorry?” Nick didn’t notice any teeth or badly timed farts or anything else anyone should be apologising for. 

“I got jizz all over your pants,” Harry points out. And so he did. Nick hadn’t even noticed he still had them on. 

“Oh well.” Will not be the first time Nick’s gone home with spunk drying in his boxers. At least this time he’s not wearing his jeans. Still half on top of Harry, arms around him, face buried in the hair over his ear, he finds himself hoping Harry’s a cuddler. 

“There’s probably some tissues down the side of the bed if you want,” Harry says. He’s tracing some kind of pattern on Nick’s shoulder with a light fingertip. Nick can’t tell if it’s lazy or nervous.

“Is that a no to post-orgasm cuddles?” Nick asks, trying to ride the line between jokingly disappointed and genuine in case Harry wants to say yes. 

Luck is, somehow, on Nick’s side. Harry huffs a laugh and fists a hand in Nick’s shirt. “Didn’t want _you_ to feel like you had to cuddle. I can be too cuddly for some people.” 

“Then stop. We’re cuddling. You can kick me out in a minute, and get some sleep before work.” Nick can feel Harry smile against his forehead. 

 

He wakes up half sweaty and half chilled, to the sound of really, _really_ aggressive rain and someone moaning, “Nooooooooooooooooo,” like if the rain doesn’t stop they might _die_. 

“Mnngh?” Nick says, and all the points of heat cling more tightly to his body. Harry. He went to Harry’s after work and they had sex. Stupidly good sex. Nick must have fallen asleep. Tentatively, he opens his eyes, then closes them again when all he can see is Harry’s hair. The rain is getting louder, and is now accompanied by what might be birds. Or whales. Or birds attacking whales. “What _is_ that?” Nick asks. 

“Hell,” Harry mutters darkly. There’s no hint of a lie in the statement. 

“Is there a way to make it stop?” Nick’s awake enough now to suspect it’s some kind of new-agey alarm clock. Those can usually be stopped. 

“Hav’ta get up,” Harry grumbles. 

In the time they’ve been talking the whales have started fighting back. “Where is it?” Nick asks. Harry gestures in the direction of the clothes rail. With no small effort, Nick extricates himself from Harry’s hold and goes to investigate. He finds a small black cube balanced on some shirts in one of the crates, a snooze button helpfully right on top. Nick pushes it, and blissful silence descends. Or at least blissful London morning traffic. 

“You are my hero,” Harry says. “You are a god. I would offer you my firstborn, but we haven’t established yet if you like babies, and I’d like to see you again, so how about sexual favours?”

Harry is insane. And beautiful, all rumpled with sleep. Nick would very much like to take him up on the sexual favours, but if his alarm’s gone off, Harry probably needs to get to work. After he tells Nick how to make it not rain again in nine minutes. “I’m free Friday,” Nick says. 

With a happy burble, Harry opens his arms like he thinks Nick should come back to bed. His smile is heart melting, and Nick has never seen anything more welcoming, but he knows what happens if he does that. Cuddles, almost definitely kissing, and more rainstorms and whales and not a lot of Harry getting to work on time. “I only hit snooze,” Nick says. “You have to work today. I can’t be responsible for making you lose your job.”

“Jobs are stupid,” Harry says. “I’d be such a good popstar. Sleep til noon, all the sex you want, don’t have to share a shower with all the other rooms on the floor.” He frowns and puts his arms down. “I might have forgot to mention that. Communal bathroom and toilet.” Nick had guessed, given there is only one door in the flat and it leads out to the corridor.

“No worries. I can shower at mine. Will use the bog though, if you point me in the right direction.” 

“Left, then third door on the right. There’s a sign on it that says ‘toilet’ so it’s hard to miss.” Harry levers himself to sitting, then swings his legs around, putting out a hand for Nick to help him up. “I at least need a hug before you go, though.” 

Nick helps him stand then wraps his arms around him. Which makes him realize that he really _does_ need the toilet. “I’m not running out on you,” he says. “Just nipping to the loo.” 

“Fine,” Harry says, easing his hold then letting Nick go. “Fine.” 

 

When Nick gets back, bladder empty, mouth rinsed out, and hair patted into a less alarming shape with damp fingers, Harry’s boiled the kettle and put Nick’s socks and shoes next to his bag. For a second, Nick reads it as a sign Harry can’t wait to get rid of him, but Harry’s smile when he looks up from where he’s getting the milk out changes his mind. Harry was just being polite. And probably a boy used to sharing a minuscule space with another person can’t make a habit of leaving things lying around. 

“Tea?” Harry asks. “Coffee? It’s only instant. I usually get something at work if I want coffee.” 

“I’m fine,” Nick says. “I’ll take another hug though if it’s on offer.” Harry positively melts into his arms. 

Hugging leads to kisses—less morning-breathy than Nick expected—and a little groping, but Nick is well behaved and leaves Harry to get ready for work while he still has time to shower. 

“I won’t let anyone steal my phone this time,” Harry says before leaning up to kiss the tip of Nick’s nose in the doorway. 

“Indeed,” Nick says. “No more pickpockets for you, young Harold.” 

Harry gives him a push. “I’ll text you. And see you Friday.” 

Two more days. Nick likes the sound of that. “See you Friday.” 

*

 

Friday, Nick is up and out before ten, because it seemed Thursday night, for reasons he’s not clear on now, like it would be a good idea to make Harry dinner, and he’s absolutely no food in. He had plans, and a recipe and all sorts, but he somehow ends up with seven varieties of frozen party food including mini quiches and bacon wrapped dates, and three different salads from Waitrose’s deli counter. He adds a French stick and a wheel of brie just in case, three bottles of wine, and a six-pack of Stella. Then he remembers that Harry is seventeen and lives in a bedsit, so Nick probably doesn’t have to try so hard. But by this point he’s in the queue. 

Once the shopping’s put away, he takes himself off to the park, because it’s gorgeous out, and he doesn’t actually need to clean the bathroom again. He’s lying on a blanket, sunglasses on, a new playlist from Annie on his headphones, when something cold and wet slimes his neck. 

“Aaaaargh!” he cries, eyes snapping open to find Pixie doubled over laughing, trying to rescue Busta from Nick’s flailing arms. “Warn a guy!” he says, frowning. She gestures at her ears, and he realizes that he can’t hear anything but the questionable Grace Jones remix blasting from his iPod, so he pushes his headphones off to hang around his neck. “Warn a guy,” he repeats at a lower volume. 

“Sorry, but that was too funny.” She waggles Busta’s ears then lets him go to trot down and sniff Nick’s shoes. 

“If I have a heart attack, you have to explain what happened to my mother.” 

“Better yours than mine,” Pixie says. 

They catch up on what Pix has been up to since he last saw her, she shows him her new bag, and Busta explores the edges of Nick’s blanket before coming back to wedge himself between them, head on Pixie’s knee, tail thumping against Nick’s thigh. “Gi’us a cigarette,” Pixie asks, and Nick does, and they sit for a bit and smoke in silence. 

“What’re you up to this weekend?” Nick asks, grinding his butt out in the grass. 

“Oh!” Pixie says. “That was what I was coming over here for when Busta licked you.” 

“It was his nose,” Nick corrects. “Cold and slimy.” 

“Whatever. You have to come out tonight. Daisy and Agyness and I are going to a new bar. All the cocktails are blue. And apparently none of the bar staff wear shirts.” 

“Can’t,” Nick says. 

“Of course you can.” Pixie waves her cigarette like it means something, but if it does, Nick doesn’t know what. 

“I’ve got plans,” Nick says. 

“With who? What plans?” 

Pixie can be utterly self-absorbed sometimes, and nothing going on around her has an impact. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be one of those times. 

“With a friend. He’s coming round after work, and we’re having some dinner.” 

With a shove that nearly knocks him sideways, Pixie says, “Nicholas, you _cur_.” 

“Stop trying to make ‘cur’ happen, Pix.” 

“Don’t be a meangirl. Is this what’s-his-name smiley name? The one who’s not that kind of boy?” She prods his knee then his shoulder. “Don’t think your shades are hiding anything. I told you he’s that kind of boy.” 

Nick can feel the smile trying to curl his mouth, so there’s no point trying to argue with her. “He might be that kind of boy,” he says. “We’ll see.” 

“When do we get to meet him?” 

“I don’t know.” Nick really does think Harry and his other friends will get along, but he also feels oddly reluctant to share him just yet. 

Pixie scoffs. “Oh, honey. If he can’t handle us, he doesn’t deserve you. Throw him in at the deep end, love.” 

In answer, Nick wrestles Pixie to the ground, which makes Busta jump up and start yipping at them, dancing back and forth, either trying to warn Nick off or get in on the fun, he’s not sure. But as conversation stoppers go it’s a success. 

*

 

By 2:10, Nick’s ditched Pixie, whizzed round the flat again to make sure there are no hidden dust bunnies—he hates a dust bunny—and texted Harry to say never mind him catching the bus, Nick will come pick him up. Nick’s dreadful at waiting is the thing, and it’s even worse when he’s at home with no one to distract him. He parks at Broadcasting House at 2:38, and walks across to the cafe. 

It’s dead quiet inside, just a couple in the corner having a very intense conversation, and Zayn behind the counter, wiping down the pastry case. There’s no sign of Harry, but Zayn looks up as Nick approaches, so Nick gives him a wave. “Hiya,” he says over the Killers track playing through the sound system. 

“Our delivery was like five hours late, so Hazza’s out back sorting it,” Zayn says. “Apparently he burst a tyre on the M23.” It doesn’t sound much like Zayn believes the driver’s story, but Nick doesn’t know him well enough. It could just be he talks like that. 

“Oh,” Nick says. He almost offers to give Harry a hand, which is what he’d do if he turned up to a friend’s house and they were stuck with chores. Or, well. He’d offer to get them a beer. Or offer to get himself a beer and sit on their sofa and mock them, probably. But it’s the thought that counts. None of those things are appropriate in Harry’s workplace, though. “I— Should I come back later?” 

The look Zayn gives him is like if the offspring of a supermodel and a Disney forest creature threatened to cut off your feet with a rusty axe. “Did you tell Harry you’d be here when he got off work?” Zayn asks, all mild-mannered and deadly. 

“Yes?” Nick is absolutely not terrified of a teenager who’s nearly a head shorter than him and built like a whippet. 

“Then you’d better be here,” Zayn says. 

“Right. I’ll have a filter coffee? If there’s any made.”

Zayn smiles small and tight, and gives what Nick takes as a nod of approval, then pours him a cup and hands it over without ringing him up. “On the house,” he says. 

Wanting to keep Zayn smiling, Nick is quick about throwing the roughly three quid in his pocket into the tip jar, and with a glance around to make sure he’s not keeping Zayn from any customers that may have snuck in behind him, Nick asks, “How’s your art class coming?” 

Either shy, or still unsure Nick is worthy of Harry’s affection and Zayn’s attention, Zayn hesitates a second before saying, “Bit weird at the moment. The model we’ve got is like eighty and he’s fallen asleep a few times. He snores like a bear. Off putting.” 

Nick can only imagine. Except he’d rather not, because he’s pretty sure snoring would not be the most off putting thing about an ancient old gent lounging around with his knob out. Nick has no desire to come face to face with what’s going to happen to his bits someday. “I thought models for things like that were all fit and stuff. Showing off their six pack?” 

“Nah. It’s good to have lots of different types. Get practice with textures and such. A knobby knee and that tufty old-man hair can be just as useful as a good set of abs. But the snorting and snuffling is a bit much.” Zayn gives one last swipe to the case and shuts the glass. “I suppose it’s Harry told you I’m doing art?” 

“I told him _everything_!” Harry says, popping out of a swing door to the back. He jumps at Zayn with arms spread, and wraps them around his shoulders from behind. With a show of ignoring Nick completely, he stage whispers in Zayn’s ear, “Even how you let me suck your cock.” 

“Oh my god,” Nick says. He washes cold then hot, but he’s laughing, too. Sure, partly in stunned surprise, but also because Harry looks utterly thrilled with himself for making Zayn’s eyes widen impossibly large and Nick’s face go the colour of a brick. Charming bastard. 

With a smacking kiss to Zayn’s cheek, Harry lets him go and bobs his head in Nick’s direction. “Hiya,” he says brightly. “I’ll be done in two minutes. Hold up, okay?” 

“Sure,” Nick says, because what else _can_ he say? “I’ll be here.” And with that, Harry’s spinning back through the door. 

“He’s a bit mental, isn’t he?” Nick asks Zayn, who’s just turning to face him again, having watched Harry leave. “And not at all shy.” 

“Thing about Harry, yeah?” Zayn says, low enough Harry’s unlikely to hear. “He sucks a lot of cock. But you— He wants to make you laugh, mate, and that’s a lot more important than him wanting to make you come. You laugh with him, we’re golden. I ever catch you laughing _at_ him, and I don’t give a monkey’s if the whole BBC comes after me. You’re dead.” 

The speech sounds prepared, but Nick has no doubt he means every word. “Good thing mental and not at all shy are my favourite things,” he says. 

“Good thing,” Zayn agrees. 

Not remotely sure what you’re supposed to do when a seventeen-year-old who looks fifteen and acts like a dad has just threatened you with bodily harm, Nick takes a sip of his coffee. And promptly burns his tongue. He’s hissing to cool it when Harry comes back through the door, wearing one of his new tight tees and a pair of skinny jeans instead of his brown polo and chinos. His hair’s sticking up every which way. 

“Don’t wait up,” he says to Zayn, giving him a tight hug and a neck nuzzle. “But I’ll text you if I’m coming home.” 

Nick’s not sure if he was supposed to hear that part, so he busies himself checking his pockets for his own phone and his keys. “Ready,” Harry says, this time from Nick’s elbow. “Ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be.” Nick waves to Zayn, trying to convey his good intentions, and then bumps forearms with Harry. Harry takes that as a sign to hold Nick’s hand. Nick’s used to being the one who has to initiate hand holding, and then he spends half the time worried the other bloke is trying to figure out how to let go. Holding hands with Harry is nice. 

*

 

“I like it,” Harry says, running a finger along the edge of Nick’s passenger seat after doing up his seatbelt. “I want to learn how to drive, though there’s not much point, with living in London.” He quirks wry lips in Nick’s direction. “I mean if you’re me. Nowhere to park around here, and where would I go, anyway?”  
   
If he’s honest, there’s not a _ton_ of reason for Nick to have a car either, but he wouldn’t want to give it up. It would be nice to take Harry for a drive, but it’s nothing but gridlock for miles. Maybe they can do it if they’re both up north visiting home. It seems Harry’s close to his mum. He must go home for Christmas. “We’ll go for a drive sometime,” Nick says.  
   
“Awesome,” Harry answers, gazing at Nick with a smile big enough that Nick has to close his eyes before he promises Harry a trip to the moon. Fortunately he hasn’t pulled out of his parking spot yet.

 

It’s not far from the BBC lot to Nick’s road, but there are enough red lights Harry has ample opportunity to touch Nick’s knee, brush fingers over his bracelets, squeeze his thigh, and generally gaze in Nick’s direction like he wants to eat his face. This, Nick thinks, is why his dad reckons they oughtn’t let seventeen-year-olds drive. Too many hormones. 

He’s ignoring the fact he’s half hard in his own pants. 

“Thank you for picking me up,” Harry says as Nick’s trying to squeeze his car into a spot not too far from his flat. “I forgot to say before. I was planning to send you dirty texts from the bus, but it was more fun watching you try not to look at me when I rubbed your leg.” 

Nick steps hard on the brakes and levels what he hopes is a stern look at Harry. “If I hit my neighbour’s car, I’m sending you the bill.” 

“I’m not touching _anything_ right now,” Harry says, all innocence and light. Innocent like the magazine spread of the men’s Olympic diving team Nick had hidden under his mattress when he was in school.

“You—“

“Though I am thinking about how much I want to suck you off.” 

Nick’s back tyre screeches against the kerb. 

“Or we could watch telly if that’s not your kind of thing.” 

With one hand, Nick covers Harry’s mouth, cupping him round the back of the neck with the other so he can’t get away. He ignores the way Harry’s eyes flare bright then dark, because that makes heat kick in Nick’s gut, which is counterproductive to ever getting his damn car parked. “You,” he says, eyes roaming Harry’s face despite himself, taking in the flush of his cheeks peeking over the top of Nick’s fingers and palm, “are going to be the death of me. Or at least my paintwork. We will be inside in _two minutes_. But only if you let me _park my car_.” 

He expects Harry to lick his palm, but Harry just blinks slowly in acknowledgment like some kind of sexy Morse code, and nods once. Nick pulls his hands away. “Two minutes,” he repeats. Harry mimes locking his lips with a key. Which makes Nick think about handcuffs, which doesn’t help either, but he supposes he can’t blame Harry for that completely.

 

True to Nick’s word, he’s unlocking his front door within the allotted time. Harry follows him inside, still keeping schtum, but looking around eagerly. “You can speak now,” Nick tells him, giving him a little shove. 

“It’s gorgeous,” Harry says. “Like you.” 

Nick flaps a diva hand. “Oh stop.” 

“Heh. That too. You are gorgeous. But I mean it looks like you. Like the flat I’d think you’d have.” 

It’s just a flat, but Nick does like what he’s done with it. He could do better with something bigger, but he’s managed to fit his things in mostly, and his sofa is comfy and long enough to lie flat on. “Thanks.” Nick can’t remember ever considering if a house looked like someone or not when he was Harry’s age. But Nick doubts Harry’s ever suffered Nick’s particular brand of teenage awkwardness. “Can I get you a drink? Tea? Wine? Is it too early for wine? Juice box?” 

“Fuck off,” Harry says all mock huffy, shoving Nick the way Nick had shoved him. “Juice box. I’m seventeen, not seven.” 

“Ew. Don’t be disgusting.” Harry’s shove landed Nick close enough to the sofa that he can lean on the back and pull Harry between his knees, which puts them eye to eye. Harry’s are very hazel in the muted light of Nick’s lounge, much less green than they’d been in the car. “I wouldn’t give my juice boxes to a seven-year-old anyway. They’re for making cocktails.” 

“Of course they are,” Harry says, though he doesn’t look like he even knows what words are coming out of his mouth. He’s got his hands on Nick’s waist, and his gaze focused on Nick’s lips. “I want to kiss you now,” he says in that low honeyed voice Nick can’t get enough of.

Nick waits for a moment to see if Harry will, but he’s just _there_ , lips parted temptingly, and before he even blinks, Nick can’t wait any longer. Leans in, pulls Harry close, and they’re kissing. 

Unlike the other night, when they’d both been impatient, now Harry’s sweet, soft, plucking Nick’s shirt with restless fingers, but not grabbing, not trying to go anywhere but just here. Nick’s hands slide up Harry’s spine, down again to brush light fingers over the back pockets of his jeans, then settle on his waist, mirroring Harry’s on Nick’s. 

Which is when the doorbell rings. 

“No,” Nick says when Harry tries to move away. “Whatever it is, I don’t want any.” 

It rings again. Then Nick’s phone starts. This time Harry doesn’t let Nick keep him. “It sounds important,” he says. 

Nick pulls his phone out and sees Pixie’s name on the screen. “It’s not important.” Pixie, he presumes, leans on the bell. “I hate her,” he adds. She won’t stop, he knows, so he gives in and goes to answer it. 

“I hate you,” he says in greeting, when he opens the door to Pix and Daisy and a bottle of vodka. 

“We want to meet the smiley boy,” Pixie says. 

“We might have been pregaming,” Daisy adds. In case that wasn’t obvious by the half-empty bottle in Pixie’s hand. 

“Not that much,” Pixie notes, catching Nick looking. “We opened it last weekend.” 

“Nick has juice.” Harry’s voice comes from over Nick’s right shoulder. “Or so he claims. If you want cocktails instead of shots. I’m Harry, by the way. I do smile a lot, though.”

“Hi,” says Pixie.

“Hiiii,” says Daisy. 

“I really, really hate you,” says Nick. 

But it doesn’t make any difference. One minute he’s kissing Harry, almost certainly heading for a blow job, and the next he’s breaking out the juice boxes and Ikea tumblers—he’s not wasting the glasses his sister Jane bought him on the cockblocking duo in his lounge—while Pixie and Daisy flank Harry on the sofa, peppering him with questions. 

And they don’t leave. 

On the positive, Nick was right. They love Harry. Pixie and Daisy have been utterly entranced since they walked in, and Agyness loves him too, when she shows up, summoned by a text from Daisy to meet them at Nick’s instead of the bar. And why shouldn’t they love him? Harry is sweet and funny and charming, and looks amazing with his tight jeans and dimples and tousled curls and blowjob lips. 

But Nick has to stop thinking about his blowjob lips or he’s going to be insufferably rude to his friends, and Harry will wonder what kind of arse he’s gotten himself involved with. 

Probably involved. Meeting the friends/flatmates-level involved. Sleepover involved. Nick thinks Harry’s sleeping over. He brought a bag. Small, but large enough for a pair of pants and a toothbrush. 

“Grimmy, we need more _booze_!” Agyness shouts, and Nick goes to fetch the wine. 

They don’t have blue cocktails, but they are treated to topless bar staff, in the form of Harry, who offers to show the girls his extra nipples when they express curiosity, and somehow fails to put his shirt back on again afterwards. Not even when it starts to get dark, and he pretty much completely takes over heating up the food Nick bought, because Nick decides they should do something to sop up some of the alcohol they’ve all consumed. It’s disturbing having a topless man wielding a bread knife in his kitchen. But disturbing in that way where Nick would actually quite like to get used to it. What is _with_ this impossible child?

*

 

When Nick wakes up, he’s wearing his clothes from the night before, but not his shoes. His head is under a pillow, his left arm and leg are under a hot, heavy weight, and it feels like an entire family of badgers has invaded his brain and is building a new sett in his skull. He assumes he’s in bed, because there’s quite a strong and nauseating scent of fabric softener up his nose, and he washed his sheets yesterday. That’s actually about the last thing he remembers. 

He tries to breathe shallowly as he worms his face out from under the pillow. It’s piercingly bright, and there are people talking somewhere nearby. The hot, heavy weight moves, moans softly, and starts to tug at Nick’s arm. “Ow,” it says. Nick blinks and tries to focus. Harry. Bleary-eyed and slack-mouthed Harry. 

“Ow,” Nick confirms as Harry tries to get Nick’s arm out from under him by moving it to the side Nick’s not lying on. Then, “Ow,” again, because talking agitates the badgers in his skull. 

“We probably shouldn’t have let Daisy bet us we couldn’t drink the last two beers,” Harry says, finally figuring out how to move Nick’s arm to his side. Nick’s dead, tingling arm.

Daisy. Beer. Of course. Nick’s house was invaded by models last night. Boozy, nosey models. “I hate them all,” he reminds Harry.

“They’re nice.” Harry wriggles unhappily, finds the duvet and pulls it over them, and tucks against Nick’s side. “I like them. Though I did have other plans for last night.” 

With far more effort than it should take, Nick puts a finger over Harry’s lips. He only pokes him up his nose a little bit. “Shh,” he says. “Me too. But we can’t talk about it now. I have a hangover.” 

“Poor baby,” Harry says, petting his cheek.

“Alexa’s here,” comes a voice from the other side of Nick’s bedroom door. “She brought coffee.” 

Nick needs coffee. _Needs_ it. But he doesn’t understand how his friends are multiplying like this. “Coffee,” he moans. There’s more movement in the bed, terrible, violent movement, and then Harry’s walking over to the door. In his pants. And nothing else. He opens it to four faces and two trays of Starbucks. Nick supposes it’s not the worst thing he’s ever seen. 

“You were right,” Alexa says when she catches sight of Harry. 

Harry, naturally, asks, “Right about what?” 

“Everything,” Alexa says, smiling. She pushes past Harry to bring Nick his drink. “Absolutely everything.” 

*

 

Nick does not get his blow job. 

The six of them end up piled on his bed, drinking coffee, eating mini quiches that Harry trots off to heat up for them, and telling stories of the worst hangovers they’ve ever had, parties that went horribly awry, and, somehow, their favorite animals at the zoo. The ladies don’t seem to find it odd that Harry never puts on more than his pants, or that he spends an inordinate amount of time playing with Nick’s hair, and Harry seems fine with the fact that Alexa falls asleep for a bit with her head in Nick’s lap. 

There’s a moment, around three o’clock when Pixie starts making noise about leaving and the others follow suit, that Nick thinks he might be in, but Harry tells him that Zayn’s family are down and he’s promised to go out to dinner with them. 

It’s a tragedy on par with how Nick’s hangovers get worse every year, but Nick’s _not_ going to complain about the very nice snog, the quick fondle while Harry’s drying off after his shower, and the very hot wank to the dirty texts Harry sends from the bus home. He does have a moment of worry that it’s weird that the wank was made hotter by knowing Harry was wearing one of Nick’s flannels while he texted, but it’s not like he sent Harry off in a shirt he’d wanked on _first_ , so it’s probably okay. 

 

Saturday night, Nick sleeps the sleep of the dead, or at least the hungover and exhausted, and Sunday he cleans up the detritus left by the impromptu party. Harry sends him a picture of the shoes Zayn painted for his little sisters—they’re pretty amazing, and Nick kind of wants a pair for himself—and a text saying he hopes he can see Nick again soon. 

Nick hopes so too, but between work, and prior commitments, they end up with conflicting schedules, and are back to just texting again, until Wednesday, when Nick thinks to invite Harry to the studio. Nick’s other friends come in periodically, and it’s never been a problem so long as they’re happy to sit in a corner and keep quiet when Nick’s on air. Beth will certainly tease, but Nick misses Harry’s face. And the way it feels pressed to Nick’s chest when Harry hugs him. He misses that, too. 

_omg really?_ Harry replies. _That would be like my dream._

 _You should definitely do it then. I’ll pick you up on my way in?_

 

Harry doesn’t work out quite as well as Nick’s other friends in the unobtrusive-studio-guest game. Mostly because Nick keeps rolling Harry’s chair over so he can show him the board, or the mic, or the computer display, and not incidentally bump their knees together, or hook a finger around Harry’s thumb, or his belt loop, or the curl that keeps falling over his eyes. It’s not a _complete_ disaster, though. There’s way less than two whole seconds of dead air when Nick gets distracted fiddling with the buttons on his flannel shirt that Harry’s wearing again (Still? Nick doesn’t dare to think about that.), and it’s not like it’s the first time Nick’s started giggling in the middle of a link that no one else thinks is funny. 

Beth is less impressed with Nick’s performance, but she spent nearly ten minutes gazing at Harry, chin literally on her hands, while he told her about the band he was in at school, so Nick’s pretty sure she won’t complain if he brings Harry back. And, in fact, she doesn’t, when Harry comes in Thursday night, too. In thanks, Nick tries extra hard, and doesn’t miss so much as a single timecheck. Which is great, considering he’s notoriously shite at timechecks, even with no one to distract him. 

When Nick drops Harry off after the show, they make out in the car on the street like it’s not just Harry that’s still a teenager. “Please tell me you’re free tomorrow,” Nick says when they finally pull apart. 

Harry’s mouth does the sideways thing it does when Harry’s about to say something he doesn’t really want to. “Zayn’s got a show tomorrow night. At the art studio.” He grabs Nick’s hand. “But you could come. If you want. And I can maybe come over after? If that’s what— I mean if you were going to invite me over?” 

A student art show. Nick’s been to a lot of those in his time, and they are often painful affairs, even if whatever friend he’s going for is talented. But an art show is likely to end up in an earlier night than if Nick invited Harry to come out with his friends. And Nick would like an early night with Harry. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll come. And yes, I was inviting you over. Very astute observation.” He gives Harry’s fingers a squeeze. “You could even— I’ve not got anything on all weekend, if you’re not busy.” 

“I’m all yours,” Harry says, and dives in for another kiss. 

*

 

The temptation to wear all black is strong, but Nick resists. Black jeans and black boots, but a white t-shirt with a copper blazer overtop, sleeves rolled up in concession to the fact it’s twenty degrees still at seven o’clock. He told Harry he’d meet him there, as Harry’s in charge of keeping Zayn calm and making sure he actually _goes_. His taxi arrives just on time. 

It doesn’t, however, get to the studio on time, as traffic is horrendous, and it’s all the way in Whitechapel. People are still arriving when he gets there, though, so he’s not going to worry about it. The studio is large, obviously usually one room, but tonight bisected by screens, rolling walls, and even a few whiteboards, all of which are displaying various life drawings. Fortunately, the table hosting glasses of wine is in a clear sightline from the door. 

“You made it,” Harry says from his elbow just as Nick’s getting a glass. Nick hands one to him as well. 

“I did.” Harry looks amazing in the dark-blue pair of skinny jeans and one of the black t-shirts he’d bought at Topman, silver belt buckle peeking out just below the shirt’s hem. His Converse are clearly another one of Zayn’s creations, swirls of blue and green and black like graffiti on the white canvas. “Where’s the artist?” Nick asks. 

“He’s over by his work.” Harry’s eyes shine as he hooks a finger in Nick’s blazer pocket to tug him toward the back corner. Nick goes easily. 

Zayn is talking to an older man—about Nick’s dad’s age, he reckons—when they approach, and looks very serious. He _is_ all in black, long-sleeve shirt and jeans, trainers, and a cuff around his wrist. On him it looks striking, rather than art-school emo, and Nick has to say he approves. It’s certainly better than his cafe uniform. 

Sensing, or maybe knowing, that Zayn shouldn’t be interrupted, Harry takes Nick over to his sketches instead. They’re decent—not brilliant—but while they lack some technical skill, they do manage to capture something _alive_ about the models. Nick spots the old man Zayn had told him about, and can tell that he’s about to drop off to sleep. There’s a girl, too, and her legs don’t bend quite right, and one arm is much too long, but something about the way her head tilts, she looks like she’s laughing. Nick likes it. “I like them,” he tells Harry. “They’ve got personality.” 

Harry’s smile is broad and bright. “That’s just what I told him,” he says. “This one looks like she just heard a really good joke.” He points at the girl with one long arm. Nick is hit with the urge to take Harry to a museum. Nick doesn’t even _like_ museums. 

“I also love your shoes,” Nick says. “Did he do them as well?” 

“My shoes are way better than my life drawing,” Zayn says, sneaking up behind them. 

“They are pretty great,” Nick agrees. “But I like these, too. This is the sleeping man?” 

Zayn treats him to a pleased look. “He is.” 

“Was that the bloke?” Harry asks Zayn, chin thrust toward where Zayn was just in conversation.

“Yeah. He’s got two spots left in the urban art class. He liked my portfolio, but it’s three days a week for twelve weeks. I’d have to give up hours at the cafe.” 

Harry puts an arm around Zayn’s waist and tucks his forehead into Zayn’s neck. “We’ll make it work,” he says. “I can do some extra hours.” 

“And we were gonna—“ Zayn says, giving Nick a sideways glance as he cuts himself off. 

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Harry tells him. “That’s a whole month off.” 

Nick is dying of curiosity, but now is not the time to be a nosey begger. “Does anyone need another drink?” he asks. “Zayn, you don’t have one.” 

“Yeah,” Zayn says. “Thanks.” 

When Nick gets back, Zayn and Harry are talking to a young blonde girl in a faux leopard-skin jacket and sequined hotpants. Zayn is just about managing a bored and disaffected facade over his extreme desire to get under one or the other of her garments. Or both. Both is definitely a possibility. Harry looks amused. 

They drink their wine, then another glass for good measure as they make a show of looking at the other students’ pieces, and it’s almost nine when Harry whispers in Nick’s ear, “Let me get my bag, and we can go.” 

“I’ll get us a taxi,” Nick says.

*

 

The meter says £4.80 when Harry interrupts Nick’s commentary on London versus Manchester corner shops to whisper in his ear: “I brought some toys in case you wanted to tie me up or something.”

“You— hmmng?” Nick says eloquently. Now that it’s no longer an awkward secret, Nick had almost managed to forget he ran into VIP-member Harry in a sex club. At least, he almost never thinks of it during daylight hours or when he hasn’t got his hand on his own dick. 

Still in Nick’s ear, breath hot and close, Harry says, “Or we can, like, handjobs or whatever, but I’m just saying, the offer’s out there.” 

“Okay,” Nick says, decidedly shakily. “Yes. Excellent. We should that. With the— Jesus.” He’s not used to having such conversations in the back of a hackney cab. 

Harry gives a little nibble to Nick’s earlobe and settles his head on Nick’s shoulder, twining their fingers together. They pass the rest of the ride in silence, because Nick’s too busy imagining his bedroom trying to compete with the dungeon of The SoHo Castle. 

When they get indoors, Nick says, “I’ll be right in,” and heads for the bottle of white in the kitchen, but in the cold glow of the fridge, thinks better of it, and turns to the coffee pot instead. There’s a reason The Castle doesn’t serve booze, and if even Aimee Phillips is willing to abide by their rules, there must be a good reason for it. 

When he turns back, he finds Harry’s followed him, bringing his bag to the breakfast bar, opening it like he plans to unpack it right here. “So,” he says. “I—“ And unpack it he does. Toothbrush, a t-shirt, pants, a metal clip like on a dog’s lead, only with clips on both ends instead of a ring to attach the lead to, black leather wrist cuffs, a bandana, a handful of clothes pegs, and a chipped decorative wooden box, like you might keep your stash in. “Condoms,” Harry says when he catches Nick looking. “In case you don’t have any?” 

Nick huffs a laugh. “I have condoms. And lube. And a sleep mask that says DIVA on it. In case that’s relevant.” 

That gets him one of Harry’s cheekier grins. “Good to know. I think I want to look at you this weekend, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind for next time.” 

Next time. Nick isn’t used to hearing things like that. They should probably get through this time first. Nick points at the pegs. “Do I want to know what these are for?”

“I like pinching. I didn’t know— I don’t know what you like. I mean, you seemed into the idea of me being tied up?” 

Nick nods. He wouldn’t have the first clue how to actually bind anyone with rope, but he can manage the buckles on a pair of cuffs, he reckons. 

“Cool. We don’t have to do— The pegs I’ve actually only ever used on myself. Like when I’m wanking. I’ve seen it, though. In porn? And there’s a woman at the club who has them on a string. She rips them off all at once. Hurts a _lot_ , I reckon from the screams.”

This is a thing that’s happening in Nick’s kitchen. He’s talking about sex screams. With a boy, a very hot boy, who maybe wants Nick to make that happen for him. “I don’t think I’ve ever made anyone scream before,” Nick says. 

Harry chuckles. “That’s okay. Are you going to be alright if you make me cry, though? In the good way.” 

“How do I know it’s the good way?” Nick’s seen the bad way—the bloke who’d just split up with his boyfriend and burst into tears when Nick kissed his neck for example. 

“It’s all the good way, in my experience,” says Harry. “But I think you’ll know. I’d tell you to stop anything I don’t like long before it gets me to where I’m crying.” 

Nick can’t help feeling like Harry’s the one who’s nine years older here. Not that Nick hasn’t had a _lot_ of sex in his time. Just. He’s not used to actually _talking_ about it. He certainly couldn’t ever have talked about it when he was seventeen. Not like this. “How do you—“ he asks. And oh. The coffee’s done. Going to fetch the mugs, he continues. “Is there anything you won’t talk about?” 

“Milk, three sugars,” Harry says. “There was a bloke. Second night I was at the club. I think he maybe guessed I wasn’t old enough to be there, and he sat me down, asked me what I wanted, what I thought I wanted, how I knew what I thought I wanted, you know, and he gave me advice about how to ask for it. And who to ask, who to avoid. He was nice. Didn’t want anything in return. Said he’d had to learn too much the hard way.”

“Nice of him,” Nick says. It sounds more like something that would happen in LA or San Francisco, kind of crunchy-nutty, but Nick’s glad Harry got that. Especially given what some of the alternatives could have been. He doesn’t want to think what _the hard way_ might look like in that situation. 

“I don’t mean to weird you out, though,” Harry says. 

“No,” Nick answers. “I mean, it’s good to know what you like, right? And I did— I’ve maybe thought about you sucking me, kind of a lot.” 

“Me too,” Harry says. “Before I even—“ He buries his face in his coffee mug. 

“Before you even?” Nick remembers Harry saying he’d had a crush on Nick from the telly, and his ego isn’t sure what to do with that. It’s flattering, but somehow a lot of pressure, too. 

“Never mind,” Harry says, flirty smile and rosy cheeks. “You drinking that coffee, or are you going to kiss me?”

Nick’s going to kiss him. Obviously. 

The kiss is a mess, hampered by them both trying to put their mugs down without spilling, and then by Harry trying to sweep the contents of his bag back into it without detaching himself from Nick’s face, but eventually they manage to get the pair of them and Harry’s bag to Nick’s room. 

“So, what do you…?” Harry asks once he’s dropped his bag and shoved his hands under Nick’s shirt to squeeze the muscles of his back, the extra padding Nick wishes he didn’t have around his waist. It’s somehow not enough to distract Nick from Harry’s question. 

_Everything_ , he wants to say. _Whatever you want_. But Harry’s not being coy. He’s laid himself out here, and Nick owes him a real answer. “I want you to suck me,” he says. “No hands.” The rest can come later. Nick at least knows what this looks like. 

From Harry’s face, that was the right thing to say. Or at least not the wrong thing. “I’ve never done it in jeans this tight,” Harry says. “I think I’ll like it? It’s good when it—“ He gives his junk a squeeze. 

“However you want,” Nick says. 

“But how do you want? Do you want me naked? Jeans on? Shirt on or off?” 

So many decisions. Barring the flash of him in a towel, Nick hasn’t seen Harry all-the-way naked yet—he’s either been in his pants or his t-shirt. And he’d like to see Harry hard while he’s sucking dick. “Naked,” Nick decides. “I want to see you.” 

“You too,” Harry says. “The undoing your flies with my teeth thing is mostly just annoying.” 

Nick can’t bring himself to be disappointed to hear it. 

Harry strips with abandon, but Nick leaves his t-shirt for last, very aware that both lamps are on, and Harry’s still got a teenager’s idea of what bodies look like. “I never got to see you last time,” Harry says when Nick’s stood looking at him pull the cuffs and clip from his bag. “Off. All of it.” Nick pulls his shirt over his head. 

“Yesss,” Harry says softly, and he’s _there_ , free hand skating over the hair on Nick’s chest, fingertips snagging at Nick’s nipples, then he rubs his face over Nick’s pecs, one cheek then the other. “Sexy,” he declares. “Later I want to touch you everywhere.” 

“We can—“

“Later,” Harry repeats, thrusting the cuffs into Nick’s hands. 

 

Nick gets them done up with only a little instruction from Harry, then, when Harry turns, snaps them together with the clip. He’s not nearly as immobile as he’d looked all trussed up in ropes, but it’s still pretty, his hands against his arse, the black leather stark against his skin. 

“Do you want to sit?” Harry asks. “Stand? Lean against the wall?” 

So much talking. In answer, Nick grabs Harry by the hair and drags him in for a kiss, backing up until his arse hits the door, with Harry stumbling after. Once he’s kissed Harry breathless, Nick lets him go, just keeps a fingertip on his jaw as he looks at his eyes shining dark, looks down past his chest to where his cock’s standing up, all flushed. Harry drops to his knees.

Which is something Nick was too late to catch, watching Harry with the boots guy. And he’s glad, because he’s not sure he would have managed to keep his hands off himself if he’d seen that. Nick’s gone to his own knees enough times to know how hard it must be to do it gracefully with your hands behind your back, but Harry manages it beautifully. Nick can’t compliment him on it just now however, because, with no jeans to get past, Harry’s mouthing at the head of Nick’s cock, and Nick needs his breath to deal with that. 

“Pull my hair,” Harry says, once he’s licked Nick wet and mostly hard, and then he sucks Nick down. 

Obligingly, Nick slides his fingers into Harry’s hair, then again to catch the lone curl he’d left bobbing against Harry’s forehead. When Harry looks up at him, eyes smiling, Nick makes fists in the strands, tugging against his scalp, and watches Harry’s eyes slip shut. And, okay, this is not obliging at all. 

It’s _good_. Nick likes having something to hold onto, and this is miles better than a loo roll dispenser or door knob, better than sheets, too. And there’s the way it makes Harry go loose. He’s still working his mouth on Nick’s cock, but his shoulders drop, his head tips back, like he was waiting for this to truly be comfortable on his knees. Nick likes as well, when Harry tries to suck him deep, pulling him back so he can only reach the tip. Likes how hard Harry sucks when he does, as if that alone will get him more. Likes the hungry noises, and even the tears at the corners of his eyes when Nick gives his hair an extra twist. It makes the good crying sound less scary. 

Plus, the view is amazing. Harry’s arms in a line down his back, clip jangling softly between the cuffs as he moves, his damp lashes and flushed cheeks, the stretch of his jaw, the flashes of Harry’s prick standing tight against his abs as the muscles work beneath the soft swell of his belly. “Fuck, you’re good,” Nick breathes. “So good. Look at you.” 

Harry whimpers at Nick’s words, tugs hard against his grip to get more of Nick in his mouth. And shit, Nick likes that. Likes that a lot. Club toilets and shared flats are not conducive to talking during sex, so Nick’s had the urge mostly trained out of him, but if Harry’s into it, Nick’s sure he can oblige. 

“So pretty down there, sucking me so good. Just the way I like it.” 

Harry hums, and jesus, Nick’s closer than he thought. He wants to keep fucking Harry’s mouth forever, wants to come down his throat, wants to come on his face, on his cock, in his arse. “Gonna—“ Nick gasps as Harry tips his head and literally swallows around his cock. “Fuck.” Nick pulls Harry off, trying to be gentle so he doesn’t choke him or pull his hair out by the root, but he hasn’t got much finesse with his hands just now. “Can I come on you? Please?” 

Harry’s panting, sweat-slick chest quivering with it, and he looks up at Nick and nods. Which is good, because Nick already has a hand on his dick, jacking it hard and fast, entranced by Harry’s worked-red lips. 

His come lands on Harry’s belly, drips down toward his cock, and when Nick remembers Harry licking come off his face, it jolts him with an aftershock so strong he grunts with it. 

“Hot,” Harry says, voice low and rough and fucked. 

Nick has to catch his breath. Has to get his hands on Harry. Has to wonder why he didn’t pick the bed when he had the chance. “Fuck,” he says. 

Harry leans forward and rests his forehead on Nick’s hip, reminding Nick his hands are still bound behind his back. Part of Nick wants to see if he can stand on his own like that, but he reaches down and helps him up, because more of him wants to kiss Harry’s face. Put his arms around him. He licks the corner of Harry’s lips, nibbles a kiss onto the edge of his jaw, and remembers: “What did he do? After. The American. Did he let you come?” 

Wriggling closer, so they’re chest to chest, Harry’s face tucked into Nick’s neck, his cock nudging where his forehead had just been, Harry says, “Let me rub off on his boot until I came in my jeans. Untied me, bought me a drink.” 

Nick is not wearing boots. And Harry’s not wearing jeans. “What do you think _we_ should do?” Nick asks. If he’s not careful, Harry’s talking-about-sex thing is going to rub off on him, boots or no.

“Bed,” Harry says. 

That sounds like a good place to start.

Nick unclips Harry’s hands, watches his shoulders shift as he works the stiffness out on his way to Nick’s bed. There’s something reassuring about it, makes Harry seem more in Nick’s league somehow. “You okay?” 

Harry gives him a smile over his shoulder, crawls up onto the mattress. “I’m great. Want to come. But it’s okay if you want to make me beg first.” With a satisfied smirk, Harry settles against Nick’s pillows. He looks very at home. 

“Make you beg?” Nick’s no stranger to teasing, if that’s what Harry means, but maybe he means something else.

“Tie my hands above my head, maybe. Fuck me on those fingers of yours? Or I like the pegs on the insides of my thighs. Down—“ Harry runs two fingers along his ribs from just below his nipples to his waist. 

“Oh,” Nick breathes. He crawls onto the bed himself, up between Harry’s knees, rubs his palms along the pale flesh between his legs, imagining the pinch of clothes pegs. How much that must hurt, how red it would make Harry’s skin. Harry’s cock twitches as he strokes, swinging toward the center line of Harry’s body. Nick wants to fuck him, feel the soft heat of him around his fingers. But Harry had looked eager… “Can we do both?” Nick asks. 

“Both is— yeah,” Harry says. He glances over his shoulder at Nick’s headboard which is a solid piece of wood. But there are posts at the corners just below the level of the mattress, that join it onto the frame. And Harry has the bandana they could tie around that, to the clip probably. 

“Tie your hands above your head, you said?” Nick checks. He’s already getting up to fetch things from Harry’s bag of tricks. 

 

It takes several minutes to get everything sorted, pillows in the right place so Harry can see but his shoulders aren’t too uncomfortable, clothes pegs and lube to hand, and in that time, Harry’s gone a bit soft. Nick nuzzles him, drops a kiss just above his balls, to the shaft, the tip of his cock, can’t help smiling at the way Harry stiffens up under his lips. The urge is strong just to suck him, see how fast he can make him come, but the other thing—making Harry beg. That sounds too good to pass up. “Good boy,” Nick says, giving one last kiss to Harry’s belly before sitting back. 

“I like it,” Harry says, low and eager. “When you call me that.” 

“You are.” Nick smiles softly, traces light fingers down Harry’s sides, making him twitch and squirm. At Harry’s waist, he pinches the skin either side, a firm nip between thumb and the first knuckle of his forefinger. 

“Fuck,” Harry hisses, and his dick jumps, gets harder. Good. Just what Nick wanted to know. 

“Pegs first?” 

Harry nods, and Nick picks up the first one. 

It’s more difficult than he’d expected, with Harry’s skin taut over his ribs, stretched tighter by the way his arms are raised. Nick has to pinch again, roll the skin a bit between finger and thumb before he can get the peg to grip. Harry makes a small hurt noise and bites his lip, but nods enthusiastically when Nick gives him a questioning look. Nick puts one on the other side. 

By the time Nick’s placing the fourth one, Harry’s hips are rocking on the bed, his cock’s so hard the head is shiny red peeking out of the foreskin, and tears are quivering all along his lashline. “Look at you,” Nick says. “ _Look_ at you.” 

“Want your fingers,” Harry says, breathy drawl.

There are three pegs left, but Nick thinks there’s something to be said for symmetry in this case. “Can you take two more first?” 

Harry takes a deep breath, and answers, “Yeah.” 

“Good boy.” Nick thumbs Harry’s foreskin up over the slick head of his cock, gives it a few good rubs, and picks up a fifth peg. “Good boy,” he says again over Harry’s whimper as the spring brings the wooden edges closed over his flesh. 

 

Six little clothes pegs, three on each side, don’t look like much, but they have Harry tugging at his bonds, mouth lax, hips in constant motion. Nick’s own hips want to rut and grind and fuck, even though his dick is still in white-flag territory. He’ll have to save that for the next round.

But he can touch. Spread his hands over Harry’s belly, thumbs touching just millimetres away from the tip of Harry’s cock, fingertips brushing the edge of reddened skin around the lowest peg. He can drag his fingers down over Harry’s flanks, knead the muscles of his thighs, hook his thumbs over Harry’s knees to pull them wider. 

“Gonna fuck you,” he says, eyes on Harry’s face. “Put my fingers inside, find all the places that make you beg.” 

“Yeah,” Harry says again. “Yeah.” 

Nick doesn’t think to put a pillow under Harry’s hips until he’s got lube all over his fingers, so he lifts Harry’s legs onto his lap instead so he has access and a decent view. He rubs first, with the pad of his thumb, the backs of his fingers, getting Harry wet, feeling him twitch in anticipation. When he can’t wait anymore, he pushes a finger inside. It goes easily, snug but not tight, and Nick sinks in to the last knuckle. 

“Oh,” Harry breathes, clenching his arse cheeks, rocking a little. “It’s so _deep_.” 

“Long fingers,” Nick says. He can’t help feeling pleased with himself for winning that genetic lottery. 

“I like them.” 

“Good,” Nick says, sliding half out then in again. “Me too.” He fucks Harry with his middle finger for a minute, a bit more, then slides his first finger in with it, twisting a bit, pushing in deep when there’s little resistance. 

“Good thing—” Harry gasps as Nick twists a fraction deeper, curls his fingers to seek out Harry’s prostate. “Good thing my hands are tied.” 

“Oh?” Nick asks, stroking, stroking. 

“Feels so good. I’d be wanking so much right now.” 

“Even if I told you not to? Asked you to be good for me?” 

“Shit,” Harry says, his abs jumping, bouncing the pegs and making him flinch, twist his hips and fuck himself down on Nick’s fingers. “Shit. Would you? I’d try. I’d try so hard.” 

And he _would_. Nick knows he would, and that knowledge might kill him. But he doesn’t want to give the knowledge back. And that might kill him too. “I know,” he whispers, his voice too vulnerable sounding. He clears his throat. “I know you would.” 

“You can— hard,” Harry says, twisting his hips again, so Nick fucks him hard. 

Harry moans, wordlessly at first, knees squeezing Nick’s thighs, fingers opening and closing on empty air, and then he’s saying, “More, more, more,” so Nick slows, eases a third finger in alongside the first two, nearly gasping at the sight of Harry taking him like that, opening around him. He wants badly to replace his hand with his cock, but Harry is making needy little noises like he’s happy with what he’s being given, and that’s good too. Nick hardly needs to move, the way Harry’s working himself on Nick’s hand, grinding down against Nick’s knuckles. 

When Harry slows, Nick takes over, steady twisting thrusts, making note of when Harry’s cock jumps, when his breath skips, winding him tighter, until he’s focused on his prostate, rubbing and stroking, alternating pressure until Harry’s babbling a litany of “please, Nick, please please please.” 

“Want me to touch you?” Nick asks when Harry’s nearly incoherent with desperation. 

“Just—“ Harry gasps. “Pegs. Off.” 

It’s not what Nick expected him to say, and it takes him a second to parse the words, but when he does, when he eases the first one open, Harry’s renewed litany hitches and breaks and the tears at his lashes spill over. 

He comes on Nick’s fingers, just from that pleasure, and the pain—or the shock—of the pegs coming off, and it’s gorgeous. There’s nothing silly or awkward or ugly about it, and that’s when Nick knows he’s fucked. He seldom even does second times, and here he is, contemplating forever. Wondering what Harry’s face would do if Nick said, “Stay always.” 

He doesn’t, of course, but he’s still thinking about it when he unsnaps Harry’s cuffs from the clip, gathers him close, not even caring about the lube and spunk and tears he’s smearing everywhere. “Shhh,” he says instead, whispering into Harry’s hair. “I’ve got you. You’re good. You’re so good. You’re amazing.” 

Harry was right. Nick can tell it’s good crying. 

*

 

When Nick goes back to the kitchen a few hours later, hungry and thirsty and sticky—despite the facecloth he’d tried to mop them up with once Harry’d gone back to his giggly self—he finds his phone on the counter. There are two missed calls and seven messages. All of them are from Aimee, who will apparently be back tomorrow. He tries not to read too much into the message that says she’s coming back to save him from himself. He hasn’t told her anything about Harry beyond that he exists, and she almost certainly doesn’t have any spy cameras in his bedroom to catch the incredibly soppy way he was kissing Harry’s face and stroking his hair. She’s just being Aimee. 

_When do you land,_ he texts while contemplating the food-void shelves of his fridge. His phone rings before there’s barely time for the message to have crossed the Atlantic. 

“Where have you been?” Aimee demands, twang strong after a few months back across the pond. 

“Asleep,” Nick answers. The clock on the stove says it’s just gone half one. Asleep is perfectly reasonable, even on a Friday night. Except, of course it’s not. 

“Asleep. Pfft. Not alone, I hope. Pix and Alexa both told me your new boyfriend is devastating.” 

Of course. He blames the hour, and the amazing shag, for forgetting that just because _he_ hasn’t told her about Harry yet doesn’t mean she doesn’t know. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s—“ Nick doesn’t know what Harry is. Boyfriend material. Probably. But seventeen, and obviously able to pull anyone he wants. Just because he’s boyfriend material, doesn’t mean he thinks Nick is. “He’s lovely. I’m not sure we’d say devastating though.” _Utterly_ devastating. _Completely_ devastating. _Thoroughly_ devastating. Semantics.

“Uh huh,” Aimee says. Nick suspects she doesn’t believe him any more than he believes himself. “Well, don’t think you’re hiding him from me. My plane lands at five forty-five. We’re going out to dinner.” 

Why is it that all Nick’s friends are desperate to get him laid, until he finally finds someone he actually _wants_ to shag. And then they want to _meet_ him. “He might be busy,” Nick says. He knows there’s no way of getting out of seeing Aimee himself—she’ll be staying with him—but he might spare Harry her neon hair and razor wit for a few days at least. 

“Busy keeping your bed warm. Pixie told me you said she’s not to bother you until Sunday evening. You can take an hour to entertain me and buy me dinner. I’ll tell you what. I’ll even buy _you_ dinner.” 

“Have you and Miss Geldof ever considered MI6?” Nick asks. “I’m sure they could use your skills.” 

“No need to fetch me from the airport. I have a car. And a night at the Thistle, because I love you. But I’ll be at yours at seven, and I expect you and your boy to have clothes on, or to invite me to watch.” 

“You are the worst friend ever,” Nick reminds her.

“I love you too, baby. See you tomorrow.” She signs off with a big smacking kiss. 

Nick opens the freezer and contemplates the last of the party food, but he can’t be arsed to turn on the oven, so he drinks a glass of water, and heads back to bed, defiantly leaving his phone where he found it. 

*

 

He anticipated some awkward in the morning, but even without the drama of screaming whales or a hangover and a house full of models, there are no weird silences, none of that uncomfortable dance where you’re trying to figure out how to tell someone you’re going to ring a taxi for them. Harry wakes first, makes coffee, and even finds a loaf of bread somewhere—Nick suspects the freezer, there are things he hasn’t looked behind in months—and makes toast. They share the shower and slippery, soapy hand jobs, and Harry makes dick jokes about Nick’s—admittedly phallic—collection of artisan toiletries that were a Christmas present from Henry last year, and then somehow Harry ends up in a white t-shirt, even though Nick knows he brought a black one with him. 

Since the closest he’s ever come to counting his own collection of white t-shirts is not arguing when Aimee declared there were a million, Nick can’t prove it’s one of his. Though the cat-got-the-cream smile on Harry’s face when Nick comments is getting added to the evidence pile. Once they’re fed and clean and dressed, Nick broaches the subject of dinner. He doesn’t bother trying to explain Aimee. He’s talked about her some, and Harry’s heard the stories from the radio, but Aimee is best experienced in person. No one man, not even someone who loves her as much as Nick does, could possibly do her justice. 

“She really wants to meet me?” Harry says. 

“She does. If you thought Pixie and the others were bad, wait until you meet Aimee.”

“I thought Pixie and the others were great, though,” Harry says. “You have really nice friends.” 

“Nosey beggers, the lot of them.” 

“Well.” Harry shrugs. “They care about you. That’s nice. Zayn wanted to meet you. Make sure you weren’t just some wanker off the radio.” 

“He threatened to cut off my arms and legs and drown me in the Thames,” Nick points out. 

Harry looks shocked for a second but then laughs. “He did not. He threatened to kill you. That’s different.” 

“Dead is dead, doesn’t matter how.” It’s hard not to laugh when Harry laughs, but Nick does an admirable job of keeping a straight face. Mostly. 

“Zayn could never make anyone suffer first, though. If you were mean and made me sad, he’d do it quick. He’s a sweetheart.” 

“Well, that’s reassuring.” It is, really. Even though he’s never once evidenced he needs protecting—except from pickpockets—Nick likes the idea of Harry having people to take care of him. Possibly because he wants to _be_ one of those people. 

“Are we having proper breakfast before we go out for dinner?” Harry asks. “I’m still a growing boy, you know.” 

“I did notice that, yes,” Nick says with a significant look at Harry’s crotch. 

“Yay, penis jokes!” Harry actually claps his hands. Nick tackles him onto the sofa and tickles him until neither of them can breathe from laughing. 

 

They end up going to the pub round the corner for food, where Nick’s determined to get the salad this time, but it’s Niçoise today, and Nick’s not keen unless he’s actually _in_ France, so he orders a jacket potato with beans, cheese, and coleslaw, because coleslaw’s kind of a salad, isn’t it? 

He nearly bites through his lip when Harry does suggestive things with his bangers and mash, and Harry catches him grinning behind his hand, but Nick doesn’t laugh. Harry is clearly a boy who needs zero encouragement when it comes to dick jokes. 

After their early lunch, they walk down to the park and laugh at dogs—and sometimes their owners—and Harry tells Nick more about life in Holmes Chapel, before falling asleep in the grass, his head against Nick’s knee. He’s probably getting grass stains on Nick’s shirt. Nick might have to steal Harry’s in retaliation. The clean one he brought didn’t look like one of his new ones, so it might even fit Nick’s shoulders. Harry does a little snuffly snore, and Nick finds it adorable.

Ugh. Nick has never been more in need of Pixie and Busta Sniff to distract him from the utter sap his brain seems capable of coming up with when exposed to sunshine and hot, pretty boys. Of course, she doesn’t turn up. But the ice cream van appears, waking Harry from his slumber, so Nick distracts himself with ice cream instead. 

“We should get you some shopping in,” Harry says, as they walk through the park with their ice lollies. He’s gotten a red Callipo and is doing things to it that make Nick _much_ more interested in blow jobs than going to Waitrose. 

“Or we could go back to mine and have sex,” Nick says. 

Harry smiles around the several inches of lolly in his mouth, slurping loudly as he lets it slip into its cardboard tube. “We could do that,” he says. He pulls out his phone and looks at it. “Or we could get you some shopping in and _then_ have sex. Aimee won’t be here for nearly four hours.”

“Supplies for when we work up an appetite?” 

“That, and I make a mean fry up, but a lad needs more than a half a gone-off cucumber and a diet coke to really impress.” 

“A fry up, eh? Sausages _and_ bacon?” 

“The works,” Harry promises. 

Shopping then sex it is. 

 

They wind up spending almost an hour in Waitrose, and come home with what Nick’s convinced is half the shop. There’s not only breakfast, but enough fruit Harry asks where his fruit bowl is—Nick doesn’t have one—biscuits, crisps, a box of fancy cakes neither of them remembers putting in the trolley, and several other things like pasta and tins of beans that Harry secretes away in cupboards Nick has rarely used. 

“Are you moving in?” Nick finally asks at the point Harry’s stopped asking Nick where things go and is just making his own choices. 

Harry laughs. “Zayn would kill me.” With a look at Nick, he adds, “Sweetly. And isn’t Aimee going to be staying with you? She eats, surely. Plus, I love to cook and don’t really have a kitchen, and you have a kitchen and don’t seem to cook at all, and you should totally invite me round to cook for you sometime.” 

Apparently this is completely logical. How has Nick not seen it yet? “Oh, I see,” Nick says. “You want me for my appliances.” Nick’s pretty sure this isn’t true, but there was that whole thing with the gift card.

“No,” Harry says, abandoning the last bag to come slide his arms around Nick’s waist. “I want you for this.” He palms Nick’s dick. “The kitchen is just to keep you sweet on me.” 

Nick is pretty sure he doesn’t need pasta and milk-chocolate digestives to be sweet on Harry, but he’s too busy letting Harry’s tongue into his mouth to say so. 

*

 

They aren’t exactly dressed when Aimee arrives, but they aren’t naked, either, so Nick feels no obligation to invite her to watch anything. They both have their jeans on, and Nick’s thrown a flannel shirt over the lovebite on his shoulder in order to answer the door. 

“Nice shirt,” Aimee says, eyebrows completely missing under the ridiculous curl across her forehead. Nick ignores her sarcasm and gives her an enormous hug. 

“I missed you,” he says. “And I hate you. How do you look so amazing after a transatlantic flight?” 

“That would be telling,” she says. “ _You’re_ positively glowing, aren’t you?” 

Nick’s hair is wet from where he rinsed out the jizz he got in it sucking Harry’s nipples after one or possibly both of them came on his chest, he only managed one button on his shirt, and he looks a complete mess. But he kind of feels like he’s glowing, so he shouldn’t argue. 

“No,” he says. Shouldn’t doesn’t mean can’t. 

“You are. Where’s this Harry, then?” 

“Hi,” Harry says from the doorway to the hall. Aimee steps out from behind Nick, and Harry stares, utterly transfixed. 

Possibly because Aimee’s got electric-orange hair done up in elaborate victory rolls. Possibly because of her knee-high, platform boots with alternating black and white panels. Possibly because her two-inch fingernails are filed to points and painted poison green. Possibly because she’s wearing a silver thigh-length trench coat, under which, if you go by the neck or hemline, it looks as though she’s wearing not one thing. Nick presumes she’s wearing some sort of dress, but he wouldn’t bet money on it. 

“They were right,” Aimee says in greeting. 

Harry blinks, picks his jaw up off the floor, and says, “Right about what? Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Let’s just say our Nicholas has a type.” 

“Let’s not,” Nick says. “Let’s not talk about Nicholas at all. How was New York? How was LA?” 

“I’m Nick’s type?” Harry asks, clearly delighted. It makes Nick want to kiss him. Now is not the time for that. Nick needs to change his shirt. And get Aimee out of his flat before she discovers that it looks like his mum’s come down and stocked his kitchen. Better she make this discovery tomorrow when Harry’s gone home. 

“Oh, honey,” Aimee says, as Nick protests:

“No one is anybody’s type. I’m changing my shirt and we can leave.” 

“You should maybe do something with this,” Aimee says, snagging her nails in his wilted quiff. “Harry and I can get to know each other.” 

She’s right, is the trouble. At least Harry doesn’t look poleaxed anymore. Nick can always convince him later that Aimee’s a pathological liar. He grabs the first shirt he sees in his room, tugging it over his head, then flies to the bathroom. He’s never been so quick with the styling products, but Aimee’s still been alone with Harry for nearly five minutes by the time he gets back. 

“Aimee says she’s the one who took you to The Castle,” Harry says when Nick returns. “But she thought you got off with a blond boy. She said you never mentioned me at all.” 

Aimee really _should_ go out for MI6. Nick hasn’t told anyone else about that night. Who did she hear it from? 

“I asked young Harold how you met, and it was a much more interesting story than any of the gang had led me to believe.” 

Why did Nick say yes to this dinner? It was the worst idea ever. “Are we driving or getting a taxi?” Nick asks, hoping to change the subject. 

“Taxi,” Aimee says. “It’s waiting outside. I told you to be ready.” 

She had. It’s true. It’s just Harry has remarkably little refractory period. 

“And you’re sure you want me, too?” Harry asks. “You don’t want to just catch up with Grimmy?” 

Nick has never met anyone so polite. Or so dirty. Dirty and polite are a deadly combination. 

“Of course we want you,” Aimee says. “Grimmy and I will be sick of each other soon enough.” 

Aimee, Nick’s certain, has never been accused of being polite.

To Nick’s surprise and relief, no further embarrassing topics come up in the cab, or at the restaurant. At least not until they’re sitting with their single tiramisu and three spoons, and a woman on her own starts to walk past their table. “Celine,” Aimee says to her. “How are you?” 

The woman—Celine—turns, gives Aimee a somewhat tired smile, then her eyes scan the rest of the table. When they light on Harry, sat between Aimee and Nick, her smile turns rigid. “Harry,” she says. 

“This is my friend, Nick,” Aimee says. “And I see you know his boyfriend, Harry?” Celine’s smile becomes fractionally less forced, and Nick’s fractionally more so. It’s one thing Aimee calling Harry his boyfriend when she’s just talking to Nick, but Harry’s going to think Nick’s speaking out of turn, now. Claiming things Harry’s never offered. 

“I see why you’ve been too busy to ring me back,” Celine says to Harry. 

“I have been busy,” Harry says, giving Nick’s knee a light squeeze under the table. “But also my phone got nicked, and I wasn’t sure how to get your number. You never came back to the caff.” 

“I didn’t see much point when you stopped returning my calls.” 

Harry looks pained. “I’m sorry. I did try to find it, but—“ 

“It was terrible when he got robbed,” Nick interrupts. He can’t stand the look on Harry’s face. “The police didn’t do a thing.” 

“Right,” Celine says. “Well, Aimee could have given it to you.” 

“I just met him tonight,” Aimee says. “I had no idea you knew him.” 

“Hmmf,” Celine sniffs. “Small world.” And with that parting shot, Celine swans out the door. 

“Oh my god,” Harry says. “That was so awkward.” 

“What flew up her asshole and lodged there?” Aimee asks. “I mean, she was always a little snooty at events, but fucking christ.” 

“I don’t know,” Harry says. “She was always nice.” He turns to Nick. “She’s the one who gave me the Topman giftcard. And it’s her brother who owns— You know.” 

“Yeah. She’s where I heard about The Castle.” Aimee has much less compunction about discussing sex clubs in public than Harry. “So, were you shagging her?” Aimee asks. And much less compunction about blunt questions than anyone else Nick knows. Which is saying something, given Nick knows his father. 

Harry flushes. “Yeah,” he says. “Not like—? She made a big deal about how we weren’t exclusive or anything, but sometimes we’d go out and then usually back to hers. If she’d been— I would have gone over to her house or something to get her number if she’d— I honestly didn’t think she’d be that upset.” 

That answers that question. Nick’s instincts about gifts and orgasms weren’t terrible, but nothing is as simple as it seems. 

“I would have at least told her I had a boyfriend, if I thought she’d care,” Harry goes on. 

There’s that word again. Out of the mouths of babes this time. Possibly Harry didn’t think Nick was overreaching. “Boyfriend?” Nick asks. 

“Boyfriend,” Aimee confirms. 

“Oh,” Harry says, turning to him, knee pressed to Nick’s, hand over his on the table. “Oh. I thought— I knew we hadn’t talked about it, and that we should. But then Aimee said, and I thought— I hoped, and she was so sure. I’m sorry. God, I’m just fucking everything up tonight, aren’t I?” 

“No,” Nick says, turning his hand up to take Harry’s. “No. You’re not. We should talk about it. When this one’s not around to stick her beak in—“ He kicks Aimee’s ankle under the table. “But I was hoping, too. I’ve— yeah. Anyway. Let’s talk about it. No one’s fucking anything up.” At least Harry’s not. Someone obviously fucked up Celine’s evening, probably before she even got to their table. 

“You two are totally boyfriends,” Aimee points out. “But you can talk about it if you want.” 

“Thank you, Miss Marple,” Nick says. 

He doesn’t let go Harry’s hand until they’ve finished their dessert.

*

The talk is much less involved than Nick had ever expected such a thing to be. Not that he’d spent much time imagining himself having a ‘boyfriends’ talk, as none of the blokes he’d dated—shagged, whatever—presented themselves as candidates. But Nick’s watched enough romcoms with friends who _do_ have boyfriends to know that real life is never supposed to be that easy. 

But, “I like you,” Harry says. “A lot. You make me laugh all the time, and you don’t roll your eyes when I tell stupid jokes, and, god, that thing you did with the clothes pegs, that was amazing, and I don’t want to shag anyone else while you’re around. 

“If you do, or like, this is moving too fast, I promise to tell Zayn not to kill you if you at least drop by sometimes and have coffee.” 

And Nick says, “Aimee’s totally right. I am your boyfriend.” 

And then they have sex on Nick’s sofa without even taking their clothes off. 

 

Epilogue:

Nick isn’t sure, because Harry’s been careful not to wind himself up about it, but he thinks he might be more nervous about the X-Factor than Harry is. Harry and Zayn traveled up to Manchester to audition for the second time so their mums could go with them, and it killed Nick that he had to stay in London, but he can’t abandon his show, and didn’t manage to talk the bosses into letting him cover X-Factor for the radio. 

Both boys made it to bootcamp, though, and Nick and Aimee are sitting home while Harry and Zayn are at Wembly Arena waiting to hear if they get to go to judges houses. Nick wants it for both of them so badly. He’s not sure what they’ll do if one of them makes it and the other doesn’t, after all they’ve been through since last year. 

“That’s your phone,” Aimee says, poking Nick in the ribs. 

Nick knows. He’s just afraid to answer. “Hello?” he says, like a complete berk when he finally gets up his nerve. 

“We— shit.” 

Harry’s crying. Nick doesn’t want Harry to be crying. There’s a scuffle, and the crying goes away, replaced by Zayn’s voice. “We got put in a band,” Zayn says. “Me and Harry both, and three other blokes. Harry was gutted because he thought we didn’t make it, and now he can’t stop crying because he’s happy.” 

“Good crying?” Nick asks. “That was good crying?” He’s heard a lot of Harry’s good crying in the last month, but never had to decipher it over the phone. 

“Tell him it’s good crying,” Zayn says, muffled, then Harry’s back. 

“We made it,” he says, sniffing. “We made it. And we’re in a band! A band together. Shit, Nick, I’m so fucking scared.” 

Now Nick’s crying too. This will never do. “You’re going to be great,” he says, swallowing his tears. “So great. That’s amazing.” 

“We’re not supposed to tell you. We can’t tell anyone. So no announcing it on the radio.” 

“No radio,” Nick promises. “But Aimee’s here.” 

“I trust Aimee,” Harry says. “Fuck. A _band_. The other lads seem nice. I just hope they’re as chill as Zayn.”

“No one is as chill as Zayn,” Nick tells him. “But they’re bound to love you. Everyone loves you.” 

“Not everyone,” Harry says, voice still tinged with tears. 

“Well, I love you,” Nick says. Shit, shit, shit, he didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.

“You’re not supposed to say it first time over the phone,” Aimee hisses at him. 

“I love you, too,” Harry says. “Fuck. Nick, I love you too.” There’s a whoop in the background. “Tell Aimee over the phone is fine. You’re just not supposed to say it first time balls-deep in my arse.” 

Nick huffs a laugh past the lump in his throat. “I think I’ll let you tell her yourself,” Nick says. “When do I get to see you again?”

“Tomorrow,” Harry says. “Ask Aimee if she can have a slumber party with someone. I need a celebratory fuck in every room of your flat.” 

“I’ll let you tell her that, too,” Nick says, and hands Aimee his phone. He needs to weep again for just a minute. His boyfriend made it onto X-Factor. It might not go anywhere, of course, but it might. They could be the DJ and the popstar. Wouldn’t that be a thing. The papers would have a field day. 

“Your boyfriend wants to say goodnight,” Aimee interrupts his musings. 

“I love you,” Nick says again when he takes the phone back. Now he’s said it once, it seems almost easy, even while he’s all choked up. “I’m proud of you.” 

“I love you too,” Harry answers. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can talk all about it.” 

“See you tomorrow, popstar,” Nick says. It feels right. 

~fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to LittleMousling for her prompt, which I am pretty sure was meant to be a list of options, not a mega-mashup prompt, but this is what came of it. And thanks also to concinnity and tarted_up for cheerleading and down-to-the-wire beta work and generally being amazing.


End file.
